On January 6, Cofetel, the Mexican telecom regulator announced that it plans to conduct two spectrum auctions by June 2010.  One auction is slated to have 9 blocks of spectrum in the 1850MHz-1990 MHz bands in 8 of the 9 mobile telephone regions and the other will have 7 blocks of spectrum in the 1710MHz-2170MHz bands in all 9 of the mobile telephone regions.

So far this doesn’t seem different from the plans that many other countries have for auctioning spectrum.  The troubling part of the Mexican auction case, though, is that in order to get the qualification criteria and the auction rules you have to pay 20,000 pesos (about US$1,500) for the document.  Crazier still is that you have to do it by 8 January (remember, this was released on 6 January!) and have to do it in person in Cofetel offices in Mexico City in the hours between 10am-2pm and 3pm-6pm.

Putting these hurdles in place (having to pay to get the rules, having 3 days to do it, having to do it in person during limited office hours) goes against every best practice developed in spectrum auctions around the globe.   This lack of transparency can only lead to a less competitive auction, which favors entrenched incumbents and does nothing to reduce consumer prices.