The mandatory registration of mobile phone lines in Mexico is about to face its first major test. August 15 is the deadline for phone numbers ending in 0, and companies will have the following 72 hours to begin suspending them if users have not yet completed the identity-linking process.
As previously reported, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) decided to extend the original deadline, which was June 30, and spread the suspensions out until December 31. The process now begins with a single digit: 0.
Millions of lines are still pending
What makes this first deadline particularly significant is the number of lines that have not yet been registered. According to figures previously cited, as of August 4, 69,028,980 lines had been registered, but tens of millions were still pending, mainly among prepaid users.
The problem did not start from zero. According to data from The CIU, Mexico went from 162 million mobile accesses in December 2025 to 157.1 million in June 2026, representing a reduction of 4.9 million lines during the first half of the year. Most of the decline occurred in prepaid services, which lost 6.3 million accesses. At the end of July, the federal government still estimated that approximately 40 million prepaid lines had not yet been linked to their users’ identities.
The number will not disappear permanently
Suspension does not mean that users will permanently lose their phone numbers. A suspended line can be reactivated after the user completes the registration process with their carrier.
While a line is suspended, calls to emergency services, citizen assistance services, the telephone company, and earthquake alerts will remain available. Regular calls, text messages, and mobile data will become available again once the registration is completed.
Telecommunications companies must also send SMS notifications twice a week to users who have not yet registered their lines, increasing the frequency during the seven days before the deadline.
The CRT had already warned of a greater risk
The extension was not simply a change to the schedule. As previously revealed through an investigation by El Economista, the CRT had warned that mass suspension could affect the stability of mobile networks because of the enormous volume of commands that networks would have to send to millions of devices.
For this reason, the schedule will now proceed gradually: first, lines ending in 0, followed by the remaining digits until reaching 9 on December 31.
The first suspension deadline will show how large the final cleanup of the mobile registry will be. Mexico has already lost millions of mobile lines during the process, but tens of millions are still pending registration. The question now is how many of them will ultimately be suspended when their deadlines arrive.
Source: msn
