Mexico has decided to register all telephone lines in the country. The teleoperators have decided to challenge him

The national mobile telephone registry has just started in Mexico and is already facing its first big test. And just a few days after it came into force mandatory registration of linesthe country’s main operators have met with the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) to request a postponement. For operators, deadlines are practically impossible to meet and to this we must add the fact that the technical systems have shown failures from day one.

The challenge in figures. Mexico has more than 158 million active telephone lines that must be registered before June 30, 2026. This means that operators such as Telcel, AT&T, Telefónica and Virtual Mobile Operators (OMV) would have to jointly register 923,977 lines each day for 172 days to meet the established deadline. A complicated goal to achieve.

Meeting. According to inform the media Expansión, representatives of Telefónica, the OMVs, Televisa and Canieti, which groups companies such as AT&T, attended a meeting with the CRT last Friday to insist on the extension. The main argument was that the industry only had 30 calendar days to develop, test and implement platforms capable of developing a process of such magnitude.

According to account According to the media, Canieti had formally requested a postponement since December 30, but did not receive a response from the regulator.

The technical problems are already visible. Telcel reported intermittencies on its platforms derived from the high demand of users trying to complete the procedure simultaneously. In addition, complaints arose about a possible security vulnerability on its portal that would have exposed personal data of clients, although the company claimed to have corrected the failure immediately. The CRT limited itself to acknowledging that there were “intermittencies on various platforms” without going into details.

The economic cost. Beyond the technical challenges, the registry represents a considerable financial burden. An entrepreneur of an MVNO explained to the Expansión medium that each link has a cost of 3.45 pesos (about 17 euro cents), an amount that only includes the verification of the user with their data, without including taxes. The problem is aggravated because, according to accounts, registration is not always completed on the first attempt and can require up to three or five attempts per line.

The CRT estimates point to a total investment of more than 4,053 million pesos (about 194.5 million euros), of which only 22 million pesos would be allocated to the development of the platform and identity verification would correspond to the largest weight of the amount with 4,031 million.

Worry. The Mexican Association of Virtual Mobile Operators (AMOMVAC) has also joined the request for a postponement, according to they count from Mobile Time. Although they recognize the security objective of the registry, which is to combat telephone extortion, which according to the Executive Secretariat left 6,880 victims between January and July, they warn about operational, economic and social risks.

The association’s main concern is associated with rural communities and populations with low digital literacy, where mobile telephony is an essential service and there is a risk that thousands of lines will be suspended if their owners fail to complete the procedure.

And now what. For the moment, the CRT has not officially responded to the extension requests and the calendar remains unchanged: the deadline expires on June 30, 2026. As of July 1, unregistered lines will be suspended, both prepaid and postpaid.

Cover image | Chantel and Pepu Rica

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