AT&T has signed off on the sale of its Mexican operation to Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings for $2 billion (about €1.7 billion), ending a decade-long effort to carve out a position in a market that Carlos Slim's América Móvil has long dominated.

The US operator framed the exit as a capital-allocation decision. AT&T said it wants to concentrate investment in mobile and fiber-optic networks at home, where it claims to be registering "significant advances".

The numbers explain why. AT&T arrived in Mexico in 2015, after a regulatory reform opened the market, buying Iusacell and Nextel for a combined $4.4 billion (roughly €3.8 billion). It merged both under the AT&T México brand. A decade later, the business is leaving for less than half of what it cost to build.

How far behind did AT&T México fall?

The market share gap never closed. Telcel, the América Móvil unit, controls around 58% of the Mexican mobile market. AT&T México sits near 16%, with 24.7 million mobile subscribers as of 31 December 2025.

AT&T decided to divest the business in 2025, and Bloomberg reported at the time that a deal of this size was under discussion. In its statement, AT&T argued it has turned the subsidiary into one of the country's leading operators and said Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings are well positioned to lead its next stage of growth.

The buyer structure matters. Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings will each hold 50% of AT&T México, a split that will make Grupo Televisa the first operator in the country to offer mobile telephony, internet, pay television and fixed-line phone services — a fully converged quad-play player from day one.

What did Stankey say about the deal?

John Stankey, AT&T's chairman and chief executive, tied the sale to his broader thesis on network infrastructure. He insisted that the future of AI will rest on converged networks and dense fiber infrastructure.

"This transaction positions AT&T México to participate in that evolution and is consistent with our long-term strategy of directing our capital to growth opportunities in the US market," Stankey added.

The framing puts vendor-side enthusiasm about AI-driven network demand alongside a simpler commercial reality: AT&T is retreating from a market where it spent ten years and $4.4 billion without ever seriously threatening the incumbent.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, once the required regulatory approvals come through. That timeline leaves AT&T operating the business for roughly another two years before the handover completes.

Is this part of a wider retreat from Mexico?

AT&T is not the only European-facing name leaving. Telefónica also sold its Mexican business this year, to a consortium of investors, in a $450 million (about €390 million) deal it formalized in April.

Two departures in a single year signal how the competitive math in Mexico has settled. América Móvil's scale, built on Telcel's 58% share, has discouraged foreign operators from sustaining the level of investment needed to close the gap. For the buyers, the appeal lies elsewhere — in Televisa's case, in bundling mobile with its pay-TV and fixed-line assets.

For AT&T, the $2 billion proceeds now flow back into US fiber and mobile buildouts, in line with the strategy Stankey laid out. Whether the new 50/50 ownership can convert a 16% market share into genuine convergence-driven growth will be the question facing AT&T México's next owners through 2027 and beyond.