Mexican cellphone users face sudden silence

[washington post] Martha Domínguez had been making calls from her cellphone for years, but Friday she faced a permanent cutoff. Midnight was the deadline for Mexicans to register their numbers with the government, and she hadn't done so.

"I was hoping there would be a reprieve," the Mexico City resident said. "Clearly, that possibility has come and gone."

In what experts say would a significant setback to Mexico's progress in acquiring world-class telecommunications, her phone -- and those of 30 million other Mexicans -- could be cut off because they are not registered.

"In technological terms, it would put us back in the Stone Age," said Ernesto Piedras, head of a Mexico City-based telecommunications consultancy.

The deadline stems from a presidential decree and legislation passed last year as part of an effort to crack down on organized crime, in particular kidnapping. Cellphones, the thinking went, were an indispensable tool for criminals: Register the lines, and you would hamper their efforts to break the law.

A year later, it appears that the legislation is creating more problems than it is solving. Given the potential for chaos, several cellphone operators said they planned to defy the deadline.

"The consequences of suspending the service would be immense," said Tomás Lajous, head of UBS Mexico Strategy and Research. "It would damage the companies and the users even more, and the onus is on the authorities to protect the latter."

Mexican cellphone users face sudden silence