Mobile phone registration in Mexico is the legal requirement that every active mobile telephone line in the country be linked to an identified holder. Under the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law of 2025 and guidelines issued by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) in December 2025, mobile operators may activate and maintain service only for lines associated with a subscriber who has presented official identification bearing a Unique Population Registry Code (CURP) for individuals or a Federal Taxpayer Registry number (RFC) for companies. The obligation applies to prepaid and postpaid lines, to both physical SIM cards and eSIMs, and to lines bought by foreign visitors, though not to travellers roaming on a foreign operator's service. Linking began on 9 January 2026. The measure is the third Mexican attempt to end anonymous mobile telephony. A first registry, RENAUT, operated from 2009 until its repeal in 2011; roughly two-thirds of lines went unregistered, the database was leaked and offered for sale, and reported extortion rose during its operation. A second, PANAUT, required biometric data and was declared unconstitutional in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Mexico in April 2022, which held that it created a system of permanent and indiscriminate surveillance and failed a test of proportionality. The 2026 scheme was designed around that ruling: operators are forbidden to retain biometric data, photographs or copies of identity documents, and the government has said that subscriber information is held by the carriers rather than consolidated in a state database. Registration proceeded more slowly than the government had planned. By the original deadline of 30 June 2026 fewer than half of Mexico's mobile lines had been linked, and the CRT replaced the deadline with a schedule staggered by the last digit of the telephone number, running from 15 August to 31 December 2026. The requirement has been challenged in more than ten thousand amparo suits, criticised by the digital rights organisation R3D, and opposed by the three main opposition parties in the Senate. President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the measure as a preventive step against extortion and fraud.
Background
RENAUT, 2009–2012 The National Registry of Mobile Telephone Users (Registro Nacional de Usuarios de Telefonía Móvil, RENAUT) was created by a reform to the Federal Telecommunications Law approved on 9 February 2009, during the administration of Felipe Calderón. It was justified as a means of preventing and prosecuting kidnapping and extortion committed by telephone. Subscribers registered by sending a text message containing their CURP, and the registration period ran from 10 April 2009 to 10 April 2010, after which unregistered lines were to be disconnected. Because the system verified nothing beyond the CURP itself, records could be created using another person's data: in April 2010 some 12,000 lines were found to have been registered in the name of President Calderón. About 27 million of roughly 83 million lines had been registered when the period closed. The registry did not achieve its stated purpose. Reports of extortion rose by 26 per cent between December 2009 and January 2010 compared with the same period a year earlier. In June 2010 El Universal reported that the database was being offered for sale on the internet and on the black market, and copies were said to be circulating in the Tepito district of Mexico City. Congress abolished RENAUT on 29 April 2011, and the Secretariat of the Interior destroyed the database and its associated records on 15 June 2012.
PANAUT and the 2022 ruling A second registry, the National Registry of Mobile Telephony Users (Padrón Nacional de Usuarios de Telefonía Móvil, PANAUT), was established by a decree reforming the Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law published on 16 April 2021, the Chamber of Deputies having approved it in December 2020. Administered by the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), PANAUT required subscribers to supply identifying information including their biometric data as a condition of holding a mobile line. The registry was challenged from several directions. The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection (INAI) filed an action of unconstitutionality on 13 May 2021, and 48 opposition senators filed a second action, which the Court consolidated with the first as Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 82/2021 and its accumulated case 86/2021. The IFT separately brought a constitutional controversy on 26 May 2021, arguing that the decree encroached on its budgetary autonomy and regulatory powers; the Supreme Court granted the institute a suspension on 15 June 2021, which its First Chamber confirmed on 20 October 2021. On 25 April 2022, the Court's plenary declared the decree invalid in its entirety, reaching the majority of eight votes required for a general declaration of invalidity. The judgment, drafted by Justice Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, held that the registry infringed the rights to privacy, intimacy and the protection of personal data in a manner that was neither reasonable nor necessary in a democratic society, and that it failed the third stage of a proportionality analysis because less restrictive alternatives existed. Justices noted that the decree set no limit on how long data could be retained and required no judicial authorisation for access, and the judgment described PANAUT as creating "a system of permanent and indiscriminate surveillance that allows the State to interfere with and directly monitor private life".
Legal framework
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