With less than a week to go, a June 30 deadline for pre-paid Mexican cell phone users to link their number to their personal identity has been extended. With less than half of Mexico’s over 140 million phone lines registered, millions of people will now face staggered cutoff dates running from mid-August to late December.
The federal government last year implemented a mandatory mobile phone registry policy on the basis of public safety, saying that associating cell phone numbers with personal identities would help reduce telephone fraud, extortion and other crimes whose perpetrators use anonymous or easily rotated numbers. People who hadn’t registered their pre-paid cell phone line by June 30 were set to face service cuts.
However, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) on Thursday announced not one but 10 new deadlines, the earliest of which is Aug. 15.
“Pre-paid lines that until now have not been linked [to their users’ identities] will have a deadline assigned according to the last digit of the telephone number,” the CRT said in a statement.
“Thus, a schedule is established so that, between August and December, each [pre-paid cell phone] user registers their line with their telephone company.”
The new deadlines are as follows:
- Aug. 15 for numbers ending in 0.
- Aug. 31 for numbers ending in 1.
- Sept. 15 for numbers ending in 2.
- Sept. 30 for numbers ending in 3.
- Oct. 15 for numbers ending in 4.
- Oct. 31 for numbers ending in 5.
- Nov. 15 for numbers ending in 6.
- Nov. 30 for numbers ending in 7.
- Dec. 15 for numbers ending in 8.
- Dec. 31 for numbers ending in 9.
The CRT said that telephone companies will suspend the telephone lines of pre-paid cell phone users who don’t register their lines by the applicable deadline. It said that suspensions will take place within 72 hours after the deadline expires, noting that cell phone users will only be able to call emergency numbers, “citizen attention” numbers and their phone companies, and receive earthquake alerts.
“Once the line is linked [to a person’s identity], the telephone company will reestablish all services (calls, messages and mobile data),” the CRT added.
“We reiterate that the government doesn’t carry out the [registration process],” the CRT said.
“Rather, it is carried out directly with telephone companies, which only associate the name and CURP [identity number] with the user of the cell phone number, eliminating any other data or image used during the registration process,” the commission said.
“If a crime involving the use of a telephone line is committed, the relevant authorities may request information from telephone companies, in accordance with the provisions of the National Code of Criminal Procedure,” the CRT said.
A very boring guide to how to register your Mexican cell phone
Why were new deadlines established?
The main reason for scrapping the June 30 deadline and setting 10 new ones appears to be that tens of millions of phone lines have not yet been registered. Registering such a large number of lines by next Tuesday would be nigh on impossible.
The El Universal newspaper suggested that low cell phone registration rates were the reason for the deadline extension. The newspaper reported that only 43% of some 144.6 million cell phone lines in Mexico have been linked to their owners’ identities.
In its statement, the CRT sought to depict the situation in a positive light.
“The registration of lines has shown sustained and growing growth, and to date, 63 million lines have been registered: 40.2 million pre-paid lines and 22.8 million post-paid lines that do not require a new registration process because they have been associated with a person since they were contracted,” the commission said.
In its statement, the CRT also said that “for everyone’s safety, each telephone number must be [registered] in the name of a person in order to eliminate the anonymity that has allowed [organized] crime to commit offenses such as fraud and extortion.”
“With this measure, Mexico will cease being one of the few countries that allow a [cell phone] chip to be purchased without identification, and will add an international practice that is in force in 166 countries,” it added.
As Mexico News Daily reported earlier this year, critics have voiced several concerns about the mandatory registration of cell phone lines, including ones related to possible mass surveillance and misuse of people’s personal data.
No registration needed for post-paid cell phone plans, officials say
In a social media post earlier this month, the federal Ministry of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation wrote that “if you have a post-paid [cell phone] line, you don’t need to complete any registration as your information is already validated.”
📱✨ Si tienes una línea de pospago, no es necesario que realices ningún registro, ya que tu información ya está validada. Tú ya estás listo 🎉
Si manejas una línea de prepago y aún no la has registrado, el reloj está corriendo. Tienes hasta el 30 de junio para hacerlo.
➡️1/2 pic.twitter.com/AQdcMGqu8t
— Secretaría de Ciencia (@Secihti_Mx) June 14, 2026
“You’re all set,” the ministry said.
The Science Ministry included a series of infographics in its post, on which it collaborated with the CRT and the federal government’s Digital Transformation Agency.
“Do you have a plan (post-paid) line? You’re already registered,” reads one.
“What is a post-paid line? Those for which you pay a fixed monthly plan,” reads another.
A third infographic reads: “Do I need to register my post-paid line? No. When you contracted your plan, the [telephone] company registered the line in your name.”
With reports from El Universal
