Spotlight: Mexico's 2 biggest telecom tower companies

Telesites is still Mexico’s No. 1 telecom-tower builder this year, adding 336 towers in Q1 to its portfolio of nearly 17,300 sites.

The company is planning to power up 302 sites and is building 251 towers in Mexico and Costa Rica, where it operates around 300 towers, according to the first-quarter results report.

It said it closed March with 1,723 contracts to lease infrastructure to companies that are not América Móvil. In 2015 the unit spun off from América Móvil due to regulatory reasons.

The number of new contracts represents an increase of 13.8% when compared to the same period of 2019.

Total revenues were 2bn pesos (US$84mn), a growth of 12.2%.

Besides América Móvil, Telesites' biggest clients are AT&T, Telefónica, Total Play, Telmex, Telnor, Ultravisión, Coeficiente Comunicaciones and Altán Redes – the company that deploys Mexico’s wholesale broadband network Red Compartida. 

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Mexico’s second-biggest player, American Tower, owned 9,441 towers, operated 187 and had 92 distributed antennas systems in the first quarter.

In comparison to 2019, American Tower has added no more than 200 towers to its portfolio.

Revenues generated across the region amounted to 336mn pesos.

According to a study by consulting firm TowerXchange last year, American Tower owned 29% of Mexico's telecoms towers and Telesites 49%.