Telmex Spreads Its Wings

We noticed with interest a recent news item reporting that the Mexican telecom Telifonos de Mixico (Telmex) has expanded into the directory business in Argentina, with plans to launch a new competitive directory in Buenos Aires.

This comes on the heels of Telmex’s recent investment in the United States, acquiring a controlling stake in the Spanish-language directory publisher Enlace. Telmex plans to rename the books Seccion Amarilla, the brand it has established in Mexico, with the hope the name will resonate with Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Telmex’s Argentine subsidiary is investing US$5 million to launch the new Argentina Yellow Pages directory, Paginas Telmex, in November 2007, the newspaper El Cronista reported. The initial editions will be distributed in capital Buenos Aires and in a limited surrounding area.

The company expects to circulate the directories in 10 Argentine cities over the next three years and plans to expand into Colombia and Venezuela. In Argentina, the Telmex subsidiary will go up against dominant directory publisher Telinver, which has a 64 percent share of the market, and Publicom, which controls the remaining 36 percent, according the TKG’s 2005 Global Yellow Pages report. Telinver is a subsidiary of Spanish publisher TPI, which in turn is owned by the U.K.-based multinational directory company Yell Group.