Mexico City, February 15. The Mexican government promised on Wednesday to connect the 20 million Mexicans who still live without internet by 2024 through the public program “Internet for all” of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
“It is a commitment that we have made that at the end of our administration, of our mandate, we are going to leave all the communities, all the municipalities of the country connected to the Internet,” said the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his daily press conference.
The government explained that, for now, the public company CFE Altán has a population covered by Internet networks of 91.48 million people, 72.6% of the population, and it is expected that this 2023 there will be coverage of more than 115.79 million inhabitants, 91.9%.
The president recalled that at the start of his administration, in December 2018, there were nearly 500 municipalities that were not connected to the network.
At that time, CFE Altán had only 2,675 towers in 2018, but it added 4,771 and by the end of 2024 it plans to have a total of 12,601.
According to a video released by the director general of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, the national electricity company can transport the Internet with the transmission networks it already uses for electricity.
The public company has installed 50,000 kilometers of optical fiber and will build 32,000 more, in addition to carrying out civil works to bring optical fiber to telecommunications towers, which can also be connected by satellite.
The technology available to users will be the 4.5G network.
The CFE emphasizes the connection of communities of less than 5,000 inhabitants, arguing that private companies do not assist them because “it’s not business”.
Bartlett called it “unacceptable” and “unfair” that almost a sixth of Mexico’s population remains disconnected.
“It would mean accepting that 20 million Mexicans are subjected to secular backwardness, to severe marginalization. This means that millions of children may be forever disadvantaged,” said the director of the CFE.
Although in his first year in office, in 2019, López Obrador promised universal coverage for 2021, he later postponed his goal to 2022 and has now promised that it would end in 2024.