Telecom Regulator Cuts Approval Time from 30 Days to Five

Mexico's Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) published simplification rules effective Sept. 9, cutting legal-representative accreditation approval from 30 to five business days and Electronic Window access approval from ten to five, while eliminating physical document requirements and converting several registration procedures into automatic filing notices. The changes affect telecom and broadcast operators, infrastructure providers, and concessionaires who interact with the Public Telecommunications Registry, arriving less than a year into the CRT's existence as it also runs parallel spectrum consultations and antitrust coordination with the CNA.

Mexico's Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) has stripped down a batch of bureaucratic requirements tied to the Public Telecommunications Registry, publishing new rules in the Official Gazette that took effect Sept. 9. The overhaul eliminates physical paperwork entirely for several procedures, merges others that used to run separately, and converts a number of registration requests into simple filing notices, a shift the regulator says is meant to cut processing costs and steer users toward digital channels.

The most concrete change involves timing. Legal representatives seeking accreditation or revocation with the CRT used to wait up to 30 business days for a decision; that window now drops to five. Applications for access to the regulator's Electronic Window portal, previously resolved in ten business days, will now clear in five. And registration certificates tied to the Public Registry of Concessions must now be issued within five business days of a filing, a firm deadline that did not previously exist in the same form.

From Approval Requests to Automatic Notices

The structural change underneath those faster timelines is a shift in legal category. Instead of filing a request and waiting for CRT sign-off, companies handling several Public Registry of Concessions procedures now just submit their information through the Electronic Window and get an instant receipt confirming it is on file, the approval step is gone, replaced by a notice the regulator simply logs.

The CRT is also merging and streamlining multiple procedures tied to the National Infrastructure Information System, phasing out physical requirements across various filings, and making electronic submission the default channel for registrations and notices going forward. Registration certificates will progressively carry QR codes as well, letting third parties verify a document's authenticity, integrity and history without contacting the regulator directly.

The CRT framed the changes as part of an ongoing internal review aimed at cutting redundant requirements, closing procedural duplication, and building more legal certainty for companies dealing with the regulator, echoing language regulators worldwide use when trimming red tape, though here tied to concrete deadlines rather than general commitments. The measures followed a public comment period that ran from May 19 to June 15, 2026, with feedback touching on administrative simplification, the shift from formal requests to notices, verification and cancellation mechanisms for registrations, the validity of certificates, how the Electronic Window functions day to day, technology outages, and the potential use of artificial intelligence tools in the process.

A Young Regulator Still Settling Into Its Role

The simplification push comes less than a year after the CRT itself came into existence. The commission was created under Mexico's 2025 telecommunications overhaul, which dissolved the previous regulator, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), and split its functions between a policy-setting agency, the Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency (ATDT), and the CRT as the technical body overseeing spectrum, licensing, concessions and enforcement. The Senate ratified the CRT's founding commissioners in October 2025, including president Norma Solano Rodríguez, under a design meant to preserve the regulator's independence, a requirement carried over from Mexico's USMCA commitments, which oblige the country to maintain an autonomous telecom authority.

Since then, the CRT has been building out its regulatory agenda on multiple fronts at once. In March, the commission signed a coordination agreement with Mexico's antitrust authority, the National Antimonopoly Commission, to jointly run the biennial review of dominance measures affecting major telecom and broadcast players, a process that determines what obligations Mexico's largest operators carry to ensure smaller rivals get fair network access. 

The CRT has also been active internationally, striking a cooperation agreement with Colombia's telecom regulator this year to align on spectrum policy, AI and cybersecurity issues, while running parallel domestic consultations on how to allocate spectrum for industrial connectivity, fixed wireless services and 5G ahead of a 2026 licensing push.

Part of a Broader Compliance Reset

The paperwork changes announced this month sit within a wider pattern of the CRT recalibrating obligations for companies it regulates. Mexico's telecommunications law, passed in mid-2025, expanded the categories of companies now subject to CRT oversight, including infrastructure operators who must follow new CRT guidelines on deployment, relocation, underground installation and removal of telecom equipment. 

That same law also handed the CRT authority to set terms under which the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) must share its own infrastructure with private operators, a mandate that gives the simplification measures added weight, since more companies now have to interact with the CRT's registries than did under the old IFT framework.

For telecom operators and infrastructure providers navigating Mexico's registries, the immediate effect of the Sept. 9 rules is procedural rather than substantive, no new rights or obligations, just a faster and less paper-dependent path to fulfilling existing ones. But combined with the CRT's ongoing spectrum consultations, its antitrust coordination with the CNA, and its broader mandate over infrastructure sharing, the changes point to a regulator trying to establish operational credibility during its first full year of independent existence, at a moment when its authority over an expanding set of regulated companies is still being tested.