AT&T Mexico kicked off 5G deployment in the country this week, with plans to expand over the next few years.
The initial scope appears limited as media reports named parts of neighborhoods in Mexico City including Naples, Del Valle Centro, Narvarte Poniente and Escandón, as the first to get coverage.
In the announcement AT&T Mexico CTO Nicole Rodriguez said the operator would deploy 5G in the country’s main markets within the next three years.
“We will be announcing more about the markets we will be reaching and how we will enable our users with 5G to experience this technology,” Rodriguez continued.
As part of the launch AT&T said it connected the first 50 mobile devices to the 5G network, specifically the Honor 50. The devices will allow users to test out browsing experiences on the new network.
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“With the deployment of our 5G network, we continue to innovate and be pioneers in the country,” said Monica Aspe, CEO of AT&T Mexico, in a statement. “By putting our customers at the center of all the decisions we make, we are committed to providing them with the latest technology and the best experience.”
Coinciding with the 5G debut, the carrier also launched a new 5G Innovation Lab. The lab is focused on helping propel the 5G ecosystem to bring about use cases that can depend the technolgoy’s capabilities such as on faster speeds, lower latency and more device connections. Industry stakeholders and customers can use the facility to test and validate different 5G-enabled experiences that impact Mexico and other emerging markets, according to AT&T.
The U.S. also has seen major carriers launch 5G labs and innovation hubs in hopes of fostering a developer community that can leverage 5G network features.
Just this week T-Mobile and the 5G Open Innovation Lab (which it helped co-found) unveiled a new partnership with the University of Washington’s CoMotion Lab. T-Mobile’s 5G network was deployed at the lab so it can serve as an incubator where 5G-focused hardware startups can develop, test and commercialize new products and services.
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“At AT&T Mexico we know that it is essential to boost the counry’s developer and entrepreneur ecosystem to enable different use cases while the network is being deployed and we connect more and more Mexicans,” said Sergio Almallo, VP and chief digital marketing officer at AT&T Mexico, in a statement. “A 5G network without 5G devices, applications or services is as useful as giving an artist a blank canvas, but no paint.”
In the third quarter AT&T’s Mexico business reported 427,000 wireless net additions. Of those 389,000 were prepaid and 36,000 were postpaid, while 2,000 were reseller net adds.
Most of AT&T Mexico’s 19.47 million subscribers are prepaid, with postpaid accounting for 4.78 million subscribers.
Service revenues in Mexico were up 20.3% in Q3 to $463 million, helping drive a 12.6% bump in total revenues of $724 million for the segment. AT&T Mexico recorded an operating loss of $130 million compared to a loss of $143 million Q3 2020.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s America Movil just completed its sale of prepaid provider TracFone to AT&T’s U.S. competitor Verizon. In October America Movil said it was ready to launch 5G in Mexico but didn’t disclose a specific timeline.