Connectivity in Mexico is hitting a regulatory wall. Telcel, the telecommunications giant under the América Móvil umbrella, reported a stark divergence in its first-quarter performance for 2025. While the company managed to add 91,000 postpaid subscribers, it hemorrhaged 482,000 prepaid users. The company attributes this volatility not to a lack of demand, but to a new mandate from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) requiring all mobile lines to be linked to a verified identity.
The policy, which took effect on January 9, presents a looming deadline of June 30. After that date, any unregistered line will be restricted to emergency calls only, effectively severing the user from the network. For a market heavily reliant on the anonymity and flexibility of "pay-as-you-go" models, the friction of registration is proving to be a significant deterrent. Data from the CRT suggests a deep-seated public hesitation: out of Telcel’s 84.3 million subscribers, only 5.7 million have completed the linkage so far.
This tension between state oversight and consumer privacy is reshaping the landscape for Mexico’s largest carrier. While Telcel’s total subscriber base grew by a marginal 0.4% year-over-year, the sharp decline in the prepaid segment signals a broader shift. As the June deadline approaches, the industry faces a potential mass disconnection—a digital winnowing that prioritizes institutional transparency over the frictionless, anonymous access that helped build the mobile age in Latin America.
With reporting from Expansión MX.
Source · Expansión MX
