Mexico government sets June deadline for mobile SIM registration

The Mexican administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that private mobile‑phone operators must verify the identity of all users by 30 June. Failure to submit the required data will trigger contractual penalties, including loss of the radio‑frequency spectrum allocated to the subscriber and interruption of basic mobile services, especially for prepaid lines that historically have low registration rates.

The policy revives a contentious debate. A similar mandatory registration scheme, the Renaut system implemented during Felipe Calderón’s term, collapsed after technical flaws allowed fraudulent entries and a massive data leak, leading the Senate to repeal it in 2011. A later 2021 proposal that required biometric data was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2022. Civil‑rights groups and data‑privacy advocates warn that the new rollout repeats past mistakes and could expose personal information, despite the government’s claim that data will be stored decentralized and accessed only with a court order.