On 25 April 2025 Mexico's president submitted a new law on economic competition to the Senate. The joint committees on radio and television, communications and transport, and legislative studies have approved an opinion on an accompanying draft decree intended to enact the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law. The law would establish the powers of the Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency (ATDT) and its regulatory responsibilities over telecom and broadcasting, designating it as the authority responsible for supervising, promoting and monitoring use of radio spectrum. The law now moves into the review process, and both the Economic Competition Law and the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law were expected to be voted on in June or July 2025.

Impact

The National Chamber of the Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology Industry (CANIETI) has assessed the proposals and warned that, if both decrees are approved, they could discourage future investment and may breach international treaties to which Mexico is party, undermining protection of domestic industry.

Main concerns

The telecom industry's main concerns include:

- a possible institutional arrangement in which a single person reports directly to the federal executive;

- allowing the state to compete directly in the retail market and to provide services to end users for commercial purposes, directly or through public-private partnerships;

- direct allocation of commercial radio spectrum concessions to administrative bodies and entities without compensation;

- removal of the definition of competition neutrality, meaning that the state as a commercial concessionaire could create an exclusive regime;

- granting the ATDT broad regulatory and de facto legislative powers that could affect the independence of the competition authority;

- allowing the ATDT to grant authorisations in commercial and industrial fields through intelligent radio communication networks without public tender.