April 10 Deadline Confirmed

In the weeks leading up to the Easter break, the Mexican Congress, acting on requests from all of Mexico’s cell phone operators, passed a law extending the cell phone registration date by one year, to April 10, 2011.

The Bill, that needed to be passed by the Senate to become law, waited in limbo over the holiday weekend while the law-makers were in recess.   The game of political dare that was set in motion by the lower house of Congress ended yesterday when the upper house of the Senate refused to rubber-stamp the Bill, and reiterated the decree that all Mexican cell-phones, whether they are on a monthly contract or ‘pay-as-you-go’ plan, need to be registered by midnight on April 10, 2010—or face immediate suspension from the country’s phone network.

There are some 84 million cell phones in Mexico and yesterday the country’s telecommunications commission said that 54.7 million has been registered.   A rush of registrations has occurred this week as the Senate voted down the extension Bill, yet even with this eleventh-hour push, over twenty-five million Mexican cell phones remain unregistered—and holders of these will wake up Sunday morning with no cell phone service if they don’t register.

The precise practical and economic effects brought about by a mass shut-down of tens of millions of cell phones remains unknown.  Clearly, the Senate rejected arguments from the phone companies about the technical difficulties and economic damage that might be caused by shutting down millions of cell phones, and opted to push-through the original legislation in an expectation of mass compliance with the decree that was passed into law last year.

If you’re a foreigner visiting or living in Mexico and you have an existing cell phone, you will need to register it if you want to continue using the phone after midnight on April 10.   However, unless you’re a long term resident in Mexico and have a CURP number, you won’t be able to register using the automated text-message process.  Instead, you need to visit a local customer service center and present your passport and visa documentation.   Full details can be found on this Mexico Insight post.

If you’re a foreigner and you buy a new cell phone in Mexico from April 10, be sure to take your passport and your visa documentation to the store with you as you’ll need these to get a phone activated at the point of sale.

See Also: Communications in Mexico