The cell phone operators sent notes to the National Communications Agency (ENaCom) opposing the official decision to benefit Telecentro, the company of former Peronist leader Alberto Pierri, to become a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).
The benefit of the Government is for Telecentro to begin providing cell phone services, but without making its own investments, through the use of the networks of Movistar, Claro and Personal. It did so by setting the ENaCom an arbitrary interconnection price and the terms of service, without the agreement of the cellular telephone providers.
"If the decision consisted of ordering mobile operators with a network, including Telefónica Móviles Argentina, to offer access to Telecentro by setting its conditions and prices, it will already be illegitimate," said Agustina Hernández, a representative of Telefónica, in a note sent to the president of ENaCom, Claudio Ambrosini, revealed by the newspaper La Nación.
"The ENaCom board lacks the authority to impose the terms, conditions and prices under which Telecentro would eventually have access to my client's mobile communications network to provide MVNO services, arbitrarily departing from the provisions that establish that they should only be stipulated by agreement of parties," added Telefónica's representative.
Claro sources assured Clarín that they are "analyzing the recursive actions corresponding to the Resolution" issued by the ENaCom.
It is that the four Kirchnerist directors of ENaCom, without the presence of its president Ambrosini, approved a Resolution that sets a wholesale price of cellular telephony, to which cellular operators must charge their infrastructure for Telecentro to use as if it were a Virtual Mobile Operator.
It is a privilege that Movistar, Claro or Personal did not have, which made millionaire investments and who oppose this type of benefits for a businessman closely linked to the national government.
Telecentro is a large operator, with its own networks, with which it provides fixed telephony, Internet and pay television services to two million customers. But they do not serve them in the current conditions to offer cellular telephony.
Therefore, Telecom sent a letter document to the directors of ENaCom in which it maintained that this directory "does not have these powers" to set prices arbitrarily, since the current regulations "establish that this must be by agreement of parties," said lawyer Damián Cassino, representative of Telecom (a company whose 40% is CVH, a company of the shareholders of Grupo Clarín).
Cassino said in that letter that the prices set by ENaCom's board are "excessively low, representing in fact a subsidy that Telecom should grant to a direct competitor such as Telecentro." It is that these are prices much lower than those set in the agreement between Telefónica and Catel, for the virtual mobile operator Imowi.
ENaCom's response
On the contrary, the vice president of ENaCom, Gustavo López, said that "since they did not agree on the price, not only did we give them the operation, but, for 60 days, we have set the price that has to be charged until the parties agree."
It is the same policy that the Government implemented with the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) 690, issued by Alberto Fernández in 2020, through which he intended to set retail prices for fixed telephony, Internet, Pay-TV and cellular telephony, which is suspended by the Justice, before the claim of the main providers of these services.
"We questioned Decree 690, because it broke the rules of the game of a competitive industry. And this is in the same vein, since the government puts a price at which the companies that invest have to rent their networks," José Corral (UCR), parliamentary director of ENaCom, told Clarín. He added: "There have to be clear rules, because regulated prices only brought in the sector was to discourage industry and lack of investment."
Industry sources said that Telecentro wanted to be a mobile operator with its own networks, for which it asked the Government to give it the spectrum that Arsat has for free. But his proposal was rejected. It also wanted to participate in an auction of radio spectrum frequencies. But he gave up his presentation. Finally, he managed to get the Government to issue a Resolution to force mobile operators to allow Telecentro to use their own networks, as if it were an MVNO. But providers reject that official measure because they say it is illegal, arbitrary and discretionary.
Alberto Pierri was a deputy of the Justicialist Party between 1985 and 2001. He presided over the Chamber of Deputies during the Menem decade, years in which he had a strong political presence in La Matanza, and then was a pre-candidate for governor of Buenos Aires in 2003, on the ticket of former President Carlos Menem. It owns Canal 26, Papelera Tucumán and Telecentro, a company that has two million customers on its own networks. It now intends to enter the mobile phone segment, using the networks of its competitors.
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