Carlos Slim slams Mexico telecoms bill Billionaire Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim has slammed a new telecoms bill before Congress as "confiscatory" and demanded that lawmakers rethink it. Shares in Mr Slim’s phone empire, América Móvil, have plunged 6.8 per cent this week since Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president, sent a bill to Congress to implement the congressional reform passed last year, aimed at levelling the playing field. Analysts said it appeared that the government was intent on reining in the telecom giant’s power. Opposition parties have criticised the bill, too, and it was not clear if it would face changes in Congress. Mr Slim has a roughly 80 per cent share of Mexico’s fixed-line market through his Telmex company, and 70 per cent of mobile telephony via Telcel. His firms have been identified as the dominant market player by the telecoms regulator, IFT, which means they face being subjected to asymmetric rules to allow other players catch up. América Móvil said the bill contained "worrying" elements that would "impede or delay" free competition in the television market. It took particular exception to being told it had to provide interconnection services to other phone companies for free, and said the law erected barriers to competition in the TV sector – dominated by Emilio Azcárraga’s Televisa, and from which Mr Slim is barred under the terms of his Telmex concession. However, Mr Slim is widely believed to have ambitions to eventually provide TV services. Referring to the interconnection obligation, América Móvil said: "It is surprising that they are trying, by law, to oblige a company to invest in order later to oblige it to sell its services to its competitors for $0." It added that the "confiscatory proposal rewards the chronic lack of investment on the part of our competitors to the detriment of consumers". América Móvil said aspects of the bill "depart from the guiding principles of the constitutional reform" and overstep constitutional requirements for Telmex to gain access to a so-called single concession that would allow it to provide TV services. "That creates barriers to entry to markets that are highly concentrated, as the broadcast and pay TV markets are, protecting the economic player that is predominant in broadcast and has market power in restricted TV, to the detriment of competition and consumers," Mr Slim said – a pointed reference to Televisa. América Móvil also complained that the bill could delay its application for a TV licence since, in order to be able to apply, "at least 24 months must have passed since the ‘fulfilment’ of several measures established by the IFT, thus prolonging the lack of competition in broadcast markets and restricted television". The company said that "constructive dialogue with the government, Congress and the industry in general is fundamental" as the bill affected legal and economic security, the development of the telecommunications sector, investment in infrastructure and innovation in services and competitiveness.