The owner of Claro's operations in Jamaica, America Movil, could face a delay in its move to acquire Digicel in El Salvador.
America Movil has been given a new condition which it must meet before it can proceed with the acquisition.
El Salvador's competition watchdog has instructed that the company must give up 20 megahertz of spectrum if its purchase of Digicel's operations in the Central American country is to be approved.
America Movil, which operates under the Claro brand in several countries, said that it had no comment on El Salvador's regulator decision.
Digicel agreed in March to sell its El Salvador and Honduras operations to America Movil, Latin America's biggest operator of cell phone services.
America Movil, owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, also agreed to sell its business in Jamaica to Digicel.
The deal has been approved by the Jamaican Government.
Dealers in limbo
And Claro dealers in Jamaica say the development in El Salvador is bad news for them.
The dealers, who have been in limbo since the Claro/Digicel merger was announced six months ago, say it will lead to further delays in getting answers on how the deal will affect them.
“And any further delays in this whole deal is really going to kill our businesses, everything is very, very slow and we really need to get closure to this whole thing, either we are going to be part of Digicel or part of the new Digicel or part of something or we are not going to be part of anything at all,”
“We need to have some sort of clear understanding about the way forward, being in limbo and not having any communication from Claro is really, really distressing,” said Claro dealer, Jacqueline Geddes.
The dealers have been contemplating legal action after complaining about being left in the dark on the details of the merger.
They also recently claimed that they were racking up debts as they had received little or no goods from Claro to sell.
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