Deadline Extended for Compulsory Phone Registration in Mexico

Take 2Last week, we reported on the looming deadline facing customers of Mexican telcos, where they were made to register their personal details or else face disconnection. At the time of that post, there were still tens of millions of customers that needed to register.

One week later, the deadline has come and gone, and while 1.49 million mobile phones were registered at the last minute, around 30% of mobile phone users have still failed to do so. Cofetel, the Mexican regulator, has come out and said that rather than disconnecting the unregistered accounts immediately, additional time will be granted to process all the last-minute registrations. Cofetel will continue to register all applications “that enter the system on time and in the correct manner”.

This is a small victory for the telcos, as they will continue to receive revenue from the unregistered phones during this grace period. However, details are unclear on how long this grace period will last, but it seems likely that it will only be long enough to allow that backlog of 1.49 million registrations to be cleared.

It still remains to be seen how many users will have their phones disconnected after this grace period ends, but given that 30% of users missed the first deadline, I’m betting that it will be a lot.

[via IntoMobile]