By Simon Woodhead
Last July, we advised of changes to Mexico dialling, whereby the 1 was being dropped between the country code (52) and mobile numbers. This change had a 30 day window which was significantly extended but will now end on August 3rd 2020, i.e. next month.
In theory, Mexico mobiles can be dialled by both +521 and +52 until that time when the +521 will fall away. Responses from international operators vary. At one extreme doing nothing with codes – presumably intending to make a nuclear change for August 3rd once someone else has done the hard work – seems common. At the other extreme some have at least tried to accommodate this change in a few different ways, but they look plain wrong and confused to us. Removing a digit is quite an unusual situation as historically digits have tended to be added. Handling it isn’t as simple as duplicating the codes and removing the 1 as that results in duplicate codes mapped to conflicting destinations. It needs a bit of effort.
The good news is that rather than just tell you about it, we’ve put the work in to accommodate this change safely in the forthcoming rate update. You will be able to dial in either format before August 3rd rather than just knowing why your calls have failed and your bill looks wrong from others! Our Mexico codes have been completely rebased to match those Simwood Inc gets from in-country partners and we will be routing all Mexico traffic through there.
It means quite significant code changes from previously (lots more codes) but also great rate changes, leveraging Simwood’s position as a carrier on two continents that is actually joined up!
Check out the rates in the next update and you’ll see that our Startup Gold rate is 80% of UK competitors for fixed, and just 20% of UK competitors for mobile dialled in the new format. Virtual and Managed Interconnect rates are significantly lower than that.
