The impact of telecommunications regulation on less well-off Mexican households
Access to mobile communications in Mexico is heavily skewed in favour of those with higher incomes. In 2014, 80% of the highest 10 percent (decile) in the income distribution had access to mobile communications, while only 30% of the lowest decile did. The same figures for 2016 are 84% and 40%. This...
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Published in | Telecommunications policy Vol. 44; no. 4; p. 101907 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Kidlington
Elsevier Ltd
01.05.2020
Butterworth-Heinemann |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Access to mobile communications in Mexico is heavily skewed in favour of those with higher incomes. In 2014, 80% of the highest 10 percent (decile) in the income distribution had access to mobile communications, while only 30% of the lowest decile did. The same figures for 2016 are 84% and 40%. This report sets out to review some of these numbers and places them within the narrative of asymmetric regulation and other reforms which Mexico adopted in 2013/14.
Among our observations is that buyers of mobile communications services in the lowest decile in 2014 spent 6% of their income on that service while those in the highest decile spent only 2%. Over the next 2 years, mobile communications prices fell by 36%; this fall in the prices of mobile communications followed regulatory reforms in the sector which were introduced in 2013/4. An interesting component of these reforms was the imposition on the preponderant operator of asymmetric access charges, which reduced its mobile termination rates to zero. This means that a policy that, in principle, was not even aimed at, designed, or considered for the poor had a real strong impact on this group of the population.
•Telecom's reform in Mexico had a distributional impact.•People in the lowest deciles were the predominantly beneficiaries.•Asymmetric regulation of termination rate has a distributional effect.•Survey on Income and Expenditure was used to measure the distributional effect of telecom reform. |
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ISSN: | 0308-5961 1879-3258 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.telpol.2019.101907 |