Twitter is helping spread campaign against 2% telecommunication tax
By Eduardo Garcia
Sentido Comun
Upset by the government's proposal to tax telecommunications services at 3 percent, a large number of consumers waged an opposition campaign on the short message system Twitter.
Twitter users sent out thousands of Tweets, short text messages of 140 characters or less, communicating their belief that the tax would raise the cost of mobile phone and Internet use - two of the many tools used today that are considered essential for work, education and the performance of everyday life.
Although some users, many of them consultants and entrepreneurs, say there is only a remote chance that the Senate will eliminate the charge approved this week by the Camara de Diputados, others believe that the Twitter campaign against the tax could push the government to generate real competitive conditions in the telecommunications industry.
Mexico's telecommunications industry already is beginning to see signs of emerging competition in telephone, Internet and television networks. And that is starting to reduce prices and improve service.
But Mexican consumers still pay some of the highest rates in the world for telecommications services, according to studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In Mexico, access to digital technologies is under monopoly or duopoly structures.
In telephony, for example, Telefonos de Mexico and America Movil, two companies controlled by Carlos Slim, the world's richest businessman, dominate their respective markets: fixed telephony and mobile telephony. Telmex also is the largest supplier of Internet service.
In the television industry, the country has only two broadcast television companies with national coverage, Grupo Televisa, controlled by businessman Emilio Azcarraga Jean, and TV Azteca, controlled by Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
"The underlying problem is not the tax itself, but we already pay very high costs," said Maria Cristina Capelo, research associate at the Center for Development Research (Cidac) and director of the Mexican Network of Competition and Regulation.
The problem, she said, is:, "Why a call is costing us over here, why the mobile phone service is better in Honduras. ... The underlying problem is the lack of competition in the sector."
