Global Business
References Environment Case
May 7, 1994
"YOUR PHONE? YES, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, ALL RIGHT," a Mexican telephone company official confirmed shouting into the receiver to be heard above what sounded like car bombs on my line. "I'LL REPORT IT."
That was 12 calls to the company, two hand-delivered letters and nine days ago. As I'm writing this, Telefonos de Mexico, the formerly state-owned phone company privatized to much fanfare in 1990, still has not sent someone over to check the problem.
It is unlikely that it will. When I called Mexico's Federal Consumer Protection Agency (from a neighbor's phone), I found out I was in line behind 76,000 other Mexico City residents who have called to complain about their telephone service since Jan. 1. This despite the phone company's claims that it is improving its service exponentially, with help from Southwestern Bell, which owns 10 percent of the communications giant.
"I'M TRYING TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT THE PRIORITY TELMEX AND SOUTHWESTERN BELL PUT ON CUSTOMER SERVICE," I screamed into the line the other day, the accompanying noise now resembling a Bosnian war zone.
But I got a spokesman's voicemail. And because both my phone lines are dead to incoming calls, I'll never know whether he called back.
While I'm waiting, I have been trying another tack _ walking up and down the streets near my office looking for a telephone repairman. If I'm lucky, I'll find one and get the problem attended to the traditional way: I'll pay him under the table to come over and fix the line.
I could place my business calls from a pay phone, if I could find one that works. The other day, I walked six blocks to a pay phone and called my editor. But the fact that I needed to stay on the line for a half-hour or so didn't please the four people lined up behind me. They were there for the same reason I was, and halfway into my conversation they shooed me off the phone.
With such concerns taking up vast chunks of time for anyone trying to run an office in this city, it is a miracle that the new companies attracted by free trade can do business here. An executive of a computer company I met on a plane told me he set up shop in Mexico 14 months ago and still doesn't have phone service in his office. Desperate, he has been forced to rely on cellular phones and to pay monthly bills that top $15,000.
HE, apparently, is not alone. Mexico has 400,000 cellular phone service subscribers, making the country the biggest cellular market in Latin America. The devices have become so ubiquitous that Mexico City's jai alai arena, a popular gathering place for the Armani and Volvo set, recently had to implement a policy obliging patrons to check their cellular phones at the door. It seems the constant ringing of the phones was upsetting the players concentration.
But for those of us old-fashioned enough to think we can get by without wireless, the prospect of making it through a year without phone service, which can take months to fix, is bleak.
"To the directors of Telefonos de Mexico, I would suggest that they pick up their telephones - if they are working and if not, that they rent a cellular," wrote Dr. Arnoldo Kraus in a letter to the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada_ after his phone went out for the eighth time in as many months.
"And I would suggest that they communicate anonymously to the service department of their own company, so that they can learn what deaf ears are.
"And if they want to deepen the experiment, they might think of getting a list of the phones that need repair and of the laughable time frames in which the company promised to fix them."
APPARENTLY, he was about as impressed as I was by the advertisements placed by the phone company recently in dozens of Mexico newspapers.
"We are installing thousands of new phone lines every day," one of the ads read, "to serve you better."
If its numbers are to believed, Telefonos de Mexico is making progress. The company says it added and replaced 800,000 phone lines last year with a 82.84 billion investment bringing the nation's total to 7.6 million lines. That's a telephone density that has grown from 5.7 lines per 100 inhabitants in 1991 to eight lines per 100 today.
And under terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, tariffs on such things as phone switching apparatus, line equipment, modems and telephone sets will be phased out by 1999, while tariffs on paging devices, coaxial cables and antennas will be gone by 2004.
When those coaxial cables arrive, I'll ask the phone company to call me. If it can get through.