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Mexico Begins Enforcement of Mandatory Mobile Registration as First Suspensions Loom

The CRT’s staggered, last-digit calendar will put millions of unregistered prepaid lines at risk of temporary suspension and interrupt SMS-based verifications for banks and apps.

Overview

  • The enforcement phase starts with numbers ending in 0 facing a 15 August deadline and numbers ending in 1 due on 31 August, after which operators may suspend nonregistered lines within 72 hours.
  • The government says about 68 million lines are already linked but independent reports and operator data show tens of millions of prepaid lines remain unregistered and at risk of suspension.
  • Prepaid users must register directly with their operator using CURP, an official ID and a biometric proof of life while most postpaid accounts are exempt because operators will validate those records automatically.
  • A suspended line keeps only emergency, operator and civic-alert calls and cannot receive SMS or regular calls, which can block one-time passwords and disrupt access to banking, delivery and messaging services until reactivated.
  • CRT rules place responsibility for storing and protecting registration data with operators rather than a central government database and the market is already shifting as the purge of anonymous prepaid lines reduced total accesses and raised average revenue per user.