Assessing Telecommunications Policy in Mexico
In 2012 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2012a) issued an assessment of Mexico's telecommunications industry. This report concluded that the performance of the sector, while improved, remains below attainable goals, and that the causes of the performance deficit are insufficient competition and ineffective regulation. The dominant telecommunications firm in Mexico, Telmex, responded to the OECD by commissioning two consulting reports (Hausman and Ros, 2012, and Sidak, 2012) that were highly critical of the OECD report. This article assesses the main criticisms of the OECD report by the Telmex consultants. The main conclusions are that both the regulatory policies and the performance of the industry are generally worse in Mexico than in peer nations, and that most of the criticisms of the OECD report by the Telmex consultants are not valid.