Mexico City: US telecommunications giant AT&T will invest $3 billion (Dh11 billion) to extend its high-speed, mobile internet service to 100 million people in Mexico by 2018, the company announced on Thursday.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said in statements after meeting in Mexico City that the country’s recent telecommunications reform enabled such investments.

AT&T entered the Mexican mobile service business when it acquired Iusacell and Nextel Mexico for $4.4 billion earlier this year.

Mexico’s sweeping reforms are aimed at increasing competition in a sector dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil empire.