Up to 60,000 Mobile Lines in Quintana Roo Could Be Suspended

Chetumal, Quintana Roo — Up to 60,000 mobile phone lines in Quintana Roo could be suspended after the first registration deadline set by the Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones (CRT), Mexico’s telecommunications regulator, passed Saturday, Aug. 15.

The deadline applied to numbers ending in zero, the first phase of a staggered registration program introduced by the Mexican government. According to rules published in the federal government’s official gazette, users with numbers ending in 0 had until Aug. 15 to link their lines to their personal information.

Passing the deadline does not mean lines will be cut off immediately Sunday. Carriers must notify users who have not completed registration and warn them that service will be disabled within the following 72 hours.

Operators including Telcel, Telefónica Movistar and AT&T will begin gradually suspending lines that remain unregistered, meaning thousands of users in Quintana Roo could face restrictions on calls, text messages and mobile data in the coming days.

Quintana Roo has an estimated 580,000 mobile phone lines, though the figure fluctuates due to prepaid account churn. Lines ending in zero account for roughly one-tenth of that total, putting the number of potentially affected users at about 60,000. The exact number of unregistered lines with that ending has not been publicly confirmed by state authorities.

The program is part of a national effort to tie every mobile line to a person or business, with the goal of strengthening user identification and combating crimes such as extortion and the use of cellphones for illegal activities.

Under the new schedule, numbers ending in 1 have until Aug. 31 to register. The remaining deadlines are: ending 2, Sept. 15; ending 3, Sept. 30; ending 4, Oct. 15; ending 5, Oct. 31; ending 6, Nov. 15; ending 7, Nov. 30; ending 8, Dec. 15; and ending 9, Dec. 31, 2026.

Once a line is suspended, the user will not be able to make calls, send messages or use mobile data normally. Emergency numbers, government citizen-service lines, carrier customer service and public alert messages will remain available.

Officials recommend users check the last digit of their number and confirm their registration was completed correctly, especially those with prepaid SIM cards or secondary lines that may not have been linked.