Cell phones

My cell phone is finally registered! That is no small statement! Early this year Mexico passed a new law that all cell phones needed to be registered with a government agency. This law is an attempt to stop extortion calls made using cell phones.

In early April it became apparent that the government was going to enforce this law. If you didn't register your cell phone, your service would be cut off on April 10. That sounds easy enough, right?

First of all, no one trusted the Mexican government and didn't want to give them any personal information that was required to register a cell phone. Then when people realized that the government meant business, there was a mad rush to register.

When I tried to register, I realized that I didn't have one official "number" that was needed for the process to be completed. Again, I thought that getting this number would be a pretty easy task. If I could believe all of the public service ads, it should have been. However, remember that this is another country!

I went to one of three offices that were listed as places to get this official number. I even checked the time to see when they were open. My first problem was that all of the streets in this area are under construction so I had to park about 8 blocks away. Once I arrived, I was directed to an upstairs office and I thought "well, for once, this really is going to be easy". When I entered the office and told them what I wanted, the receptionists said "Oh, our copy machine isn't here. You have to return when it is installed."

At this point I had three days to register, so I decided to try another office. Again I checked the hours. This time I ran into a protest of some kind and couldn't park anywhere near the office. When I arrived at the office, it was closed --- two hours before the listed closing time.

I returned home to discover that I really did have this official number. I just hadn't realized what it was. So I entered all of the information on my cell phone and sent a text message as the instructions indicated. According to the instructions you would then receive a return text message saying that the registration was in progress. I received this message and thought "Whew, I'm home free".

The message stated that the registration was in progress and that within 24 hours I would receive confirmation that my cell phone was registered. Five days later and 4 days past the shut off deadline I finally received the message.

My experience echoed the experience of thousands of Mexicans trying to register their cell phone. The registering agency was overwhelmed and the entire process almost shut down the cell phone company. There are still hundreds of thousands of phones not registered and no one has had their cell phone service shut off so now I wonder if it was all worth it!