July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico will license new airwaves this year to promote more competition in the mobile-phone industry dominated by America Movil SAB, the country’s antitrust chief said.

The Federal Competition Commission will decide on the rules for the spectrum sale by the end of August, Eduardo Perez Motta, the panel’s president, said in an interview July 17. That will allow telecommunications regulators to move ahead with the licenses before the end of the year, he said.

The government aims to sell the airwaves to at least one new competitor in the wireless market, where America Movil has a 72 percent share. The winning bidders will get spectrum suitable for voice, video and high-speed data transmission over third- generation, or 3G, networks.

“What we have to look at is how we can assure that the growing businesses, the incumbents, have space to keep growing with more spectrum, while also creating space for new players,” Perez Motta said. “At the end of the day, these licenses have to benefit the users.”

America Movil, controlled by billionaire Carlos Slim, leads Telefonica SA, Grupo Iusacell SA and NII Holdings Inc. in Mexican wireless customers. Telefonica, with 20 percent of the market, needs more airwaves to offer high-speed Internet service in Mexico City, Fabian Bifaretti, chief executive officer for Mexico, said in May.

Luisa Fernanda White, a spokeswoman for America Movil, and Isabel Suarez Mier, a spokeswoman for Telefonica, didn’t respond to e-mail messages today and couldn’t be reached by phone.

Potential Bidders

Telecommunications regulators plan to license a total of 120 megahertz of wireless spectrum in the 1.9 gigahertz and 1.7 gigahertz bands.

The sale could fetch as much as $1.5 billion, James Rivett, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in London, estimated in a May research note.

Grupo Televisa SA, which controls two of Mexico’s largest cable-television companies, may consider bidding for the airwaves, Chief Financial Officer Salvi Folch told investors at a July 10 conference, according to a research note this week by Gregorio Tomassi, an analyst with Banco Santander SA.

Axtel SA, the second-biggest fixed-line carrier, has also expressed interest in offering a mobile-phone service.

Industry Probes

The antitrust agency is also nearing completion of two investigations to determine whether America Movil or other wireless carriers dominate aspects of the wireless business, such as call completion. The cases, along with two probes in the fixed-line phone business, should be completed by the middle of September, Perez Motta said.

The agency completed two separate inquiries earlier this month, finding Telefonos de Mexico SAB, the fixed-line phone leader also controlled by Slim, to be dominant in carrying local calls and in leasing ‘dedicated lines” to rivals. The rulings give the Federal Telecommunications Commission more authority to oversee Telmex’s prices and the quality of its products.

America Movil gained 54 centavos, or 2 percent, to 27.96 pesos at 4 p.m. New York time in Mexico City trading. Telefonica rose 7 cents to 16.54 euros in Madrid.

To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in Mexico City at tharrison5@bloomberg.net; Jens Erik Gould in Mexico City at jgould9@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 20, 2009 16:21 EDT