The Forgotten Telecom Gamble: How Grupo Salinas Bet on Bipers in Peru and Colombia in 2000
By Elena Rostova
Grupo Salinas was fighting a multi-front financial war. In Mexico, Salinas Pliego was neck-deep in the launch of Unefon, an aggressive effort to build an urban CDMA cell network aimed at lower-income Mexican consumers. Unefon had entered a massive $618 million financing and equipment agreement with Canadian giant Nortel Networks to supply switching centers and cell towers.
When the dot-com bubble popped in late 2000, telecommunications debt markets froze. Nortel plunged into financial distress, eventually renegotiating credit terms and suing Unefon over disputed licensing and equipment obligations.
With Salinas Pliego battling telecom disputes in North America and pouring cash reserves into Unefon to prevent it from collapsing, the Andean paging experiment was starved of strategic utility. Grupo Elektra’s retail operations in Lima and Bogotá were thriving on appliance and motorcycle sales, but the Biper boxes sitting in the display cases had become dead inventory.
Instead of generating steady cash flow, the Andean Biper concessions were incurring tower maintenance fees, regulatory compliance costs, and call center payroll with no long-term customer retention. Pagers were dead; mobile had won.
Elena Rostova holds a Master's degree in Public Health Journalism. She covers groundbreaking medical research, holistic wellness trends, mental health awareness, and nutritional science.
