After three years in Mexico City, the 2010 Canitec trade show is being held in Monterrey City, with local MSO Cablevisión Monterrey --where Televisa is a shareholder-- as host.

To many U.S-based exhibitors and participants, this may turn into an advantage: on the one hand, the city is closer to the States and less complicated than Mexico City. On the other hand, many cable operators from different cities of the interior will be more visible, partially offsetting the concentration process that has affected the industry.

To Canitec, the main challenge is to be able to maintain the lobbying momentum that has, since President Felipe Calderon took office, been able to postpone Telmex's entry into the television distribution field.

On the business side, Mexico wants to stay as the most important Latin American pay television market, a privilege now contested by Brazil, which has been expanding at a faster pace because it suffered less from the effects of the 2008-2009 worldwide economic downturn.

The Mexican pay television industry needs plenty of new equipment to upgrade its infrastructure and further expand its activity into telecommunications; as seen in this issue, Megacable is starting to offer standalone Internet access and telephony services in the areas it has digitized, without asking the customer to first buy video services.

And Televisa, Megacable and telco Telefónica have teamed up to bid for two fibers that are part of the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) fiberoptics network, the second-largest (after Telmex's) in the nation. In addition, Televisa has recently acquired 30% of Nextel Mexico, after purchasing telco Bestel in 2007.

Business will be ebullient but not open to everybody: vendors will probably have to first identify the best prospective buyers and then contact them, not counting too much on floor traffic, which at this point produces mostly friends and existing clients.

To those interested in the regulation aspects, the International Broadband Seminar will offer the chance to get acquainted with what happens in nations such as Brazil, Peru and Argentina, in addition to the host country. The government plans to auction wireless spectrum, opening the door to a new nationwide player or two, and later open the way to a National Broadband Plan, as in the States and Brazil. This will also merit a degree of scrutiny