América Móvil: 2.9 million prepaid lines gone, and revenue kept growing

América Móvil closed at 22.47 MXN on 26 October, down 2.2% on the day.[1] The share is up 21.1% since the start of 2026, 7.6% over twelve months and 3.2% since late July.[1] Average daily volume over the last 20 sessions was 39.6 million shares, against 50.1 million in the earlier sessions.[1]

The group’s third-quarter revenue was 250,634 million pesos, up 7.6% from a year earlier.[2] In the same quarter its Mexican mobile unit, Telcel, recorded 2.9 million net prepaid disconnections.[3]

A lost line and a lost customer are not the same number.

What disappeared

Telcel closed September with 81.8 million mobile subscribers.[3] Prepaid ended at 65.53 million lines, down 4.4% from a year earlier, and the total base was 3% smaller.[4] América Móvil’s results place the drop in a clean-up of its customer base, during the mandatory registration of mobile phones.[3]

Independent telecoms analyst Radamés Camargo argues that the lost lines are not the same as lost customers who use and pay for the service, because registration removes numbers that generated no consumption or whose owners had no interest in keeping them.[4] That is one analyst’s reading, not a count. Neither report says how many of the 2.9 million lines were active.

What the revenue says

Telcel’s cellular revenue reached 67,248 million pesos, up 6.6%, with mobile services up 5.4% and equipment sales up 10%.[4] Inside services, postpaid revenue grew 8% and prepaid 3.5%, which El Imparcial describes as a more moderate pace than in earlier periods.[3] Telcel also added 144,000 postpaid subscribers.[3]

Average monthly revenue per user rose from 186 to 196 pesos.[3] Read that one carefully. As the same report notes, a higher average does not necessarily mean everyone is paying more.[3] Removing lines that brought in nothing would lift the average with no change in anybody’s bill.

Prepaid revenue still growing while prepaid lines fall fits the clean-up explanation. The slower pace is the part that doesn’t fit so neatly.

The regulatory side

Telcel is among the companies warning that the regulator’s proposed Ventanilla Digital could add procedures, duplicate requirements and delay network deployment.[5] The proposal is meant to simplify a process that today can take up to 20 state and municipal procedures and an average of 1.4 years.[5] That matters for how fast networks get built, not for this quarter’s line count.

What to watch

• Prepaid service revenue. Registration began in August, so the third quarter covers only part of it.[4] More lines disappearing would not be news on its own. Prepaid revenue falling would be.
• Revenue per user. Whether the 196 pesos holds once the clean-up is over will show how much of the rise was arithmetic.
• Televisa. América Móvil already sees Televisa as a direct competitor after its agreement, with Fintech Holdings, to buy AT&T’s Mexican mobile business.[6]

If prepaid revenue holds while lines keep falling, the 2.9 million was mostly paperwork. If it falls too, it was customers.