You may remember that AT&T recently bought two carriers in Mexico. The third and fourth largest in the country, Lusacell and Nextel, respectively. AT&T has been planning to expand their business outside of the US, and it looks like Mexico is the first stop. Now that they have control over two of the carriers, they are planning to invest around $3 billion into the country. The carrier also plans to cover about 40 million users over the next 6 months, and crossing the 100 million mark by the end of 2018. There’s about 120 million people in Mexico right now.
The exec put in charge of AT&T’s Mexico plans, Thaddeus Arroyo, has said that it’s going to take the carrier a few years to get the business where the company wants it to be. Obviously, Mexico’s networks aren’t as well off as they are here in the US, it’s also a much smaller network in Mexico than the US, which will help out AT&T in getting things going quicker. It’s worth noting that the move to Mexico came after Carlos Slim’s America Movil operator was forced to open up their towers and networks to allow rival networks to connect to America Movil’s network for free. Which seems to be opening the door for competition.
Reuters report is stating that it’s going to cost AT&T around $7 million to reform the network down in Mexico. And to get that broadband network to where they want it to be. AT&T is currently the number two operator here in the US – although some numbers show them as number one. AT&T not only does wireless, but they are also an ISP and cable provider. In fact, they are in the middle of a merger with DirecTV right now. AT&T has been rumored to be expanding their business outside of the US, in fact there were some rumors that they might be looking to get a stake in Vodafone – this surfaced before Verizon bought Vodafone’s stake in their company, out. Depending on how thing’s go in Mexico, we could see some more expansion for AT&T, of course it won’t be right away. Likely we won’t see any more expansion from the company until at least 2020.