Telcel’s Mexican Monopoly
Allan Leinwand from GigaOM talking about competition-based market corrections:
We’ve all been there before — with cell phones, about a decade ago. Usage-based pricing tiers started out with very limited minutes and lots of overage charges. Competition in the market by innovative operators drove plans fairly quickly to a point where only exorbitant usage resulted in overage charges (and now there are flat-rate plans for those consumers, too).
With regards to Mexico, Telcel has such an unfair advantage its competitors can’t pressure the telcom behemoth to lower its rates. There is no innovation in the Mexican cellular market directly because of Telcel’s dynastic monopoly leaving Mexico stuck in a quagmire where even light usage of cell phones leads to overage charges in voice, sms and data.
