Mexico: Telcos pursue opportunities in pay TV
November 2, 2016
The current Mexican telecommunication services market is still dominated by Telmex and its mobile arm Telcel, with the exception of the pay TV segment, where Televisa has the largest share. In this context, smaller competitors find it hard to capture market share and generate the much needed return on investment. OTT services providers and systems integrators bring further competition in the fight for market share, creating a complex scenario within a mature market.
According to the Mexico Total Telecommunications Services Market, an analysis from Frost & Sullivan’s Digital Transformation team, the market earned revenues of $26.9 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $31 billion in 2021. Regulators have been trying to curb the dominance of Telmex and Telcel with only limited success. However, the recent merge between Axtel and Alestra brings a new and more powerful competitor into the marketplace.
“Although the regulatory effort to curve down Telmex/Telcel dominance over the Mexican market is still underway,” explains Ignacio Perrone, Digital Transformation Industry Manager for Frost & Sullivan, “the competitive landscape has already been revitalised, in particular with the entrance of AT&T into the mobile segment and the merge of Axtel and Alestra, which gave birth to a more solid competitor with a solid customer base combining residential and enterprise customers.”
“Despite CAGR growing at single digits in all the segments, specific technologies or services in each segment present higher growth rates,” says Perrone. “Thus, mobile data is expected to grow at double digits, while mobile voice is already declining. Among fixed-broadband technologies, ADSL is losing share, while cable modem and FTTH are growing steadily. In the pay TV segment, CATV is expected to decline, while DTH and IPTV will continue to grow. Data communications technologies present a very diverse scenario, with Metro Ethernet growing at double-digit rates, while circuits and private lines are declining. The only exception is fixed telephony, where all services–local voice and international long distance–are decreasing.”
With the traditional services market considered to be mature, service providers are likely to find more success for growth in less penetrated markets, such as pay TV and data communications. In pay TV, specifically, over-the-top services are increasing adoption and stimulating price repositioning of traditional services. In data communications, the small and medium-sized business segment is driving growth, as large enterprises are already saturated. In addition, telecom players continue to invest in network expansion and upgrades, while looking toward new revenue sources such as mobile data, FTTH, Internet protocol television IPTV and value-added services.