The Chinese company argued that there is not enough economy of scale to exploit the 1500 MHz spectrum in TDD mode, therefore, to better take advantage of the technical nature of these radio signals and save costs for consumers and telephone companies.

Huawei, the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world in 2023 by revenue volume, requested the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) to promote the exploitation of the 1500 MHz or “L Band” spectrum, through the technology that best suits to service providing companies.

The IFT has proposed to compete for eight nationwide spectrum blocks belonging to Band L for fifth generation (5G) services and through a technological exploitation model known in this industry as time duplexing or TDD, for its acronym in English.

For Huawei, the exploitation of those eight blocks of spectrum, each with a size of 10 Megahertz of bandwidth, through TDD transmission technology, would not be so beneficial for component manufacturing companies and companies that deploy infrastructure to offer telephony, video or data services to the final consumer.

Huawei, with about 30% of the world market for components for the development of telecommunications networks in 2023 and 4% of the global smartphone market after the United States veto of its technology, asked the IFT to leave free consideration of operators the choice of the L Band exploitation model, once these frequencies are concessioned as a result of the IFT-12 Spectrum Tender to create new 5G services and to also expand the country's 4G-LTE coverage.

The Chinese company argued that there is not enough economy of scale to exploit the 1500 MHz spectrum in TDD mode, therefore, to better take advantage of the technical nature of these radio signals and save costs for consumers and telephone companies, it stated that the operators freely choose to exploit them in TDD or through frequency division duplexing or FDD.

“The proposed segmentation in Band L currently mentions eight national blocks of 10 MHz, which specifies the TDD mode. But 3GPP standardization defines L Band for different duplex or SDL modes: TDD, FDD. SDL mode is the predominant plan for this band; already adopted in Europe and supported by hundreds of smartphone models (…) There are no smartphones that support L-Band TDD mode,” Huawei told the IFT.

The IFT-12 Tender, which would formally begin during the third quarter of 2024, is a process for allocating radio frequencies with which companies providing Internet and mobile telephone services and business products will be able to develop new fifth-generation services ( 5G) and also to strengthen existing 4G-LTE cellular coverage.

The IFT-12 auction is so far the most robust frequency tender in the history of Mexico, as it will go to market with the competition of 6,158 lots of spectrum to create services of national, regional and local scope.