As AT&T continues the work of integrating the previously purchased Mexican assets that it currently holds in carriers Iusacell and Nextel Mexico, the carrier is tempering expectations that the integration will be executed anytime soon, and suggests a long-term view for those waiting on changes.
Newly installed AT&T Mexico CEO Thaddeus Arroyo has confirmed that the amount of investment needed to achieve AT&T’s network quality and service goals for the Mexican market and for its larger overall goal of rolling out its North American Mobile Service Area initiative will take at least two years of investment, owing to the fact that the aforementioned Mexican carriers currently run a varied range of network technologies that need to be properly consolidated before major investment can begin.
“What we really want to do over the long term is deploy advanced fourth generation services to over 100 million Mexicans …That will take a number of years…It actually will take us a couple of years to ultimately begin to enhance and begin to deploy the experiences that we’re looking for.”
AT&T also confirmed that after it had adjusted the customer reporting methodology to its own from the one used by former Iusacell owner Grupo Salinas, AT&T discovered that Iusacell had nearly half of the customers that it claimed to have held when the carrier was purchased by AT&T late last year, with the current customer base now sitting at approximately 5.97 million customers, far lower than the 9.2 million first announced during the initial purchase.
Following the purchase of both Iusacell and Nextel Mexico, AT&T began adding unlimited mobile and landline calling to Mexico on its service plans as well as through its Cricket Wireless subsidiary. AT&T’s GoPhone also features a monthly service plan that includes roaming between Mexico and Canada for I cent a minute with included data roaming and unlimited messaging.
