17. How has competition impacted Telmex?
Internationalization accelerates when competition arrives. This means that competition has always made us better.
When long distance came into México we tried to do likewise in the United States. It was very complicated. We could not do it. But both America Móvil and Telmex have accessed Latin America very quickly due to Telefónica coming into the Mexican market. Telefónica was the leader in Latin America due to the number of mobile telephony customers. As you know it operates in Sao Paulo, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia; and probably it is also present in fixed telephony. Of course it is no longer present in mobile telephony.
I would also like to state that for example, so that you can see how these things work, the president of Spain called the president of Mexico to merge Telmex and Telefónica. This happened in 99 or 2000 and the president of Mexico answered that we were a private company and the government had nothing to do with the company.
We stated that probably something could be done so we could access the United States market together, but they did not show interest there.
And now they say we are dominant and we are everything, but previously they wanted the two of us to merge. This is how things change. Of course, with the CEO of Telefónica himself, who came here to discuss this business.
There are two factors. Number one, there should be appropriate competition when there is one company competing in many markets and attacks one that is in its place; it can corner it. Instead if they compete in several places, competition is in a more leveled field.
In summary: The truth is that if you have seen the group’s history, when we do better is when we start competing because the truth is that competition makes you better, always, always makes you better, even if the competitor wins. It’s as if you run 200 meters and do not want to compete with anyone, well, you are never going to be better; you practice sports and then do not compete against anyone, it’s the other way around.
When I was talking about the group’s philosophy, I mentioned that we had in mind the world’s benchmarks, not only because you have to compete with those present, but you also have to raise the bar for benchmarks as much as possible.
And undoubtedly, competition not only benefits consumers, it also benefits stakeholders.
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