Intelligent CIO LATAM Issue 55 | Page 11

NEWS

Elea Data Centers earns 2025 Frost & Sullivan Transformational Innovation Leadership recognition

Elea Data Centers, Brazil’ s leading sustainable data center platform and the first to deploy artificial intelligence at scale in Latin America, has received the 2025 Frost & Sullivan Transformational Innovation Leadership recognition – the consultancy’ s highest global honor for companies reshaping their industries.

The award places Elea among the most innovative organizations evaluated worldwide and underscores its ability to advance compute density, sustainability, geographic expansion and operational resilience in parallel.
The recognition follows a rigorous 12-month evaluation by Frost & Sullivan that included sector analysis, global benchmarking and technical review by analysts and specialists.
The assessment focuses on two pillars – the capacity to transform markets through consistent innovation and the tangible impact delivered to customers across the full operational lifecycle of solutions.
Only a small share of companies assessed globally meet these standards.
Frost & Sullivan’ s report highlights Elea as a catalyst for change in Brazil’ s digital infrastructure by integrating geographic scale, high density computing, renewable energy and large scale AI-ready developments.
Initiatives supporting the decision include the Rio AI City project with up to 3.2 GW of projected capacity powered by renewable energy, Petrobras’ 30 MVA data center featuring advanced liquid cooling and supercomputing support, a nationwide platform spanning five states with low latency architecture and direct subsea connectivity and proven resilience during the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul when its POA1 facility remained fully operational.
The recognition arrives as global digital infrastructure confronts accelerating AI workloads, rising energy costs and mounting efficiency and sustainability demands worldwide today.

Mexico faces defining moment for 5G regulation and spectrum policy in 2026

frequency bands at 10 GHz and 37 GHz aimed at fixed wireless internet services.
However, specialists emphasize that the program alone does not resolve the main bottleneck: the lack of a 5G auction with competitive conditions, realistic pricing and clear rules that make network deployment viable. The last auction attempt by the former Federal Telecommunications Institute was cancelled in 2025, leaving the process stalled and without a clear reactivation timeline amid institutional changes.

The absence of a 5G spectrum auction and ongoing disputes over prices, rules and investment incentives have positioned 2026 as a defining year for mobile connectivity in Mexico, according to industry analysts.

They warn that without regulatory certainty and favorable deployment conditions, the country will continue to lag behind the needs of industry, government and consumers.
The new Telecommunications Regulatory Commission approved its 2026 Annual Program for the Use and Exploitation of Frequency Bands, which identifies strategic spectrum such as 600 MHz to expand 5G coverage and capacity, as well as high
Ernesto Piedras, Director of The Competitive Intelligence Unit, said the start of 2026 combines high expectations with regulatory uncertainty and warned that the new regulator must demonstrate real technical and regulatory capacity beyond a cosmetic institutional shift. He argued that the central challenge is avoiding a failed spectrum allocation process disconnected from market realities.
Jorge Bravo, president of the Mexican Association for the Right to Information, agreed that Mexico is late to the 5G technological cycle just as it seeks to benefit from nearshoring. He stressed that spectrum prices must reflect the heavy investment required and noted that returns increasingly depend on industrial, enterprise and vertical applications rather than consumers alone. www. intelligentcio. com
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