Mexican telecoms regulator IFT confirmed it awarded a grant to the Altan consortium to build and run a shared 4G wholesale network in the country over a 20 year term.

The consortium, which is backed by US and Chinese investors, Mexican television operator Megacable and Mexico-based telecoms player Axtel, won the long-running tender in November after the only other bidder in contention was disqualified for not presenting enough funds.

The IFT grant provides the consortium a 20-year shared network concession to build and run the 4G network, which was conceived to promote competition and reduce the dominance of America Movil in the country. Smaller players will be able to rent coverage and capacity on the new 4G infrastructure.

In a statement, the regulator said the grant allowed Altan to “take advantage and exploit frequency bands of radio spectrum for commercial use at the national level”, in the 703MHz to 748MHz and 758MHz to 803MHz bands.

Altan will now finally be able to push ahead with building the network, after the tender was delayed several times.

The other bidder, a consortium made up of Rivada Networks and Spectrum Frontier, was disqualified from the process after failing to present a $52 billion bid bond on time.

Altan had raised $750 million at the time it won the tender. The consortium said it plans to cover 92 per cent of the population with the network in seven years, according to a previous Reuters report.