by Charles Miller

This week I have had both conversations with friends and a few calls from readers, all interested in knowing more about the new Mexican federal regulation officially known as the "Acuerdo mediante el cual el Pleno de la Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones aprueba y emite los Lineamientos para la Identificación de Líneas Telefónicas Móviles." For those who are unfamiliar, the new regulatory guideline says that all cell phone users in Mexico must register with the government their personally-identifying information by June 30 or their cell phone service will be disconnected.

For me this was a non-issue with my having already provided my name, address, other phone numbers, email, and photo ID over 10 years BS (Before Snowden). That is what you do if you want to be able to recover your same phone number in case you lose your phone. BS (Before Snowden) people were largely unaware of the extent of government surveillance and generally unconcerned that it was going on in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. AS (After Snowden) a lot of people are cognizant of the pervasive extent of personal data collection by governments and private industry.

As I said earlier, registering my cell phone was not an issue for me, having already done so BS, but I decided I should check to be sure my account was up to date. I showed up at the Telcel Centro de Atencion a Clientes early in the morning and found them not busy, and a cheerful young lady offered to help.

TelCel has an app that allows people to register per the law. (I do not know about AT&T/Mexico, Usacel, Movistar, etc.) But, generally, I don't like installing apps on my phone.

So I pulled the ruse on her that I had successfully used at the bank… I had switched my GSM chip to an antique candy-bar phone; no apps, no internet, no camera.

On her computer she checked my account and said everything was up to date except for my biometric data. Then looking at my phone she smiled and said "No problem" we could use her smart phone camera to take my picture.

The app recording my mug shot did not accept our first attempt, or the second, or the third. "Let's try again and this time don't smile" she said. Next time it was "This time I'll hold the camera a little higher." Eventually we got through to the "Look straight ahead" then "Look up" then "Look right" then "Look left" to get my biometrics entered into the system. Then the young lady and I finished off with high fives. Amazingly, during the 30 or so minutes this took there was no other customer in line behind me, and that is a segue into my next point.

That almost-empty Telcel office confirmed what was reported by El Imparcial, that Mexicans are staying away in droves! There are some 130 million registered cell phones in Mexico, possibly more Mexican cell phones than Mexicans; I should come back to that later. As of this writing it is reported by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission that only 52 million cell phone users have submitted their personally-identifying information. In the post-Edward-Snowden world it is understandable that a lot of people have concerns about their personal privacy and a smart phone is effectively a personal surveillance device; I should come back to that later as well. Apparently there are millions of people who do not want to have their identity tied to their cell phone number.

Looking at the numbers above, it is easy to extrapolate that to achieve the requirements of the new rule would have required registering over a half million phones per day every day since January. That did not happen. With the June 30 deadline bearing down, tens of millions of cell phone accounts need to be registered every day. I have my doubts that is going to happen. It is unknown if the computer network can handle that surge of traffic, but it is a no-brainer to see that the cell phone customer service centers will not be able to help all the people, who unable or unwilling to navigate the app, will need 30 minutes each.

It is not clear what is going to happen next. Officially, June 30 remains the deadline to complete registration and authorities have warned that cell phone numbers not registered by the deadline may be disconnected.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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