Cell Phone Registration Date Extended – Maybe

In April last year, Mexico’s law makers passed a decree requiring all users of pre-paid cell phones in Mexico to register their phones by April 10, 2010—or face being cut-off from the network.

On March 12 this year, all of Mexico’s cell phone operators wrote to the Secretary of Transport and Communications, asking for an extension to the deadline.  The companies cited ‘technical’ reasons in relation to cutting-off up to forty million still-unregistered cell phones in one swoop.  The commercial implications they cited appeared to argue more persuasively—the prospect of cutting-off that many mobile phone lines, they said, could create real and significant damage to the country’s economy; a sum quoted to be between 200 and 500 million pesos (US$16-39 million) per day—and so the lower House of Congress rushed through a Bill, as requested by the companies, extending the registration deadline date by twelve months, to April 10, 2011.

However, the Bill has yet to be passed by the upper House of Senators before it can become law, and some characters therein have been vociferous in their rejection to the notion of any extension date being granted.

Thus a game of ‘dare’ has been set in motion.

The Easter holiday means that the Senate won’t properly debate and vote on the matter until after the recess, and Senators may let the matter draw out to the wire, if for no other reason than political posturing.

Notwithstanding the politics, the proposed extension Bill will very likely pass into law before the current deadline.  Some of Mexico’s most influential business moguls—including Carlos Slim—stand to take a 30-40% drop in sales income if the telephone companies are told to summarily shut down up to forty million customer accounts.   With that much at stake, it’s fair to speculate that the aforementioned interests will be making calls—probably via cell phones—to reluctant Senators between lunches this holiday weekend.

There is a saying locally, that in Mexico no pasa nada hasta que pase.  The cell phone registration decree passed in April last year is being faithful to that particular tenet.