Keeping or Porting a Guatemalan Phone Number (2026): What Decreto 14-2025 Actually Changed

In short: Guatemala’s number-portability law has been in force since 28 November 2025 and you still cannot port a number. Decreto 14-2025 gave the SIT two months to publish the implementing regulation (Art. 13) and gave everyone six months to comply (Art. 14). Both deadlines — 28 January and 28 May 2026 — passed with no regulation. In July 2026 an appellate chamber ordered the SIT to get on with it; in August 2026 the file reached the Presidency unsigned. Nothing was published as of 17 September 2026. Meanwhile the genuinely useful half of the law is already binding: Article 9 stops an operator permanently killing your SIM and releasing its IMSI just because you let the balance run out — which is the rule that decides whether a Guatemalan number survives a year in the United States.

If you are choosing a Guatemalan carrier, the phone plans page prices all the live Tigo and Claro plans and the SIM card guide covers buying one as a foreigner. This page is about the number itself — moving it, and keeping it.

The one-line answer, by situation

Source for every row: Decreto 14-2025, Diario de Centro América No. 58, 28 November 2025, read 2026-09-17.

Why you cannot port a number in Guatemala today

The law is real and it is in force. Article 15 says so plainly: “La presente Ley entrara en vigor a partir de su publicacion en el Diario Oficial y sera de aplicacion en todo el territorio nacional.” It was published on 28 November 2025, having been approved by Congress on 11 November and sanctioned on 27 November.

What the law does not do is describe the process. It hands that job to the regulator:

• Article 13: “Dentro de los dos (2) meses de vigencia del presente Decreto, la Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (SIT) debera emitir el reglamento de la Ley de Portabilidad Numerica en Servicios de Telefonia.”
• Article 7, literal a) then constrains what that regulation may demand of you — a simple request, physical or electronic, with the DPI as the only document — and Article 7, literal c) requires a Comité de Portabilidad Numérica to be formed “dentro de los cuarenta y cinco (45) dias de promulgada la presente ley”

So the right exists in the statute and the mechanics do not. Without the regulation there is no published request form, no published response clock for the operators, and no confirmation that the Committee was ever seated.

Run the statute’s own clock. Published 28 November 2025, so:

Dates in the “Due” column are arithmetic on the publication date in the gazette and the intervals written into Articles 7, 13 and 14 — not figures quoted from a third party.

The trail of the missing regulation

This is the part no carrier shop will explain, so here it is with the dates attached.

Note the court order carefully. The chamber told the Superintendent to push forward and continue the administrative procedure. The reporting does not state a compliance deadline set by the court, and this page will not invent one.

What this means if you are reading a rate comparison and thinking of switching: treat the number as non-transferable until you personally see a published regulation. Guatemalan reporting has repeatedly quoted a near-term date and then not seen it arrive. The honest planning assumption is that porting is not available, and re-checking the SIT is the only thing that changes it.

The rules that will apply on day one — worth knowing before you plan a switch

These are written into the statute, not into the missing regulation, so they will not change when the regulation lands. They also tell you what to prepare.

You ask the operator you are moving to, not the one you are leaving. Article 4 a): “El usuario que desee realizar la portabilidad numerica, debera solicitarlo al Proveedor Receptor, quien se encargara de gestionar el proceso, procedimiento que debera efectuarse de manera eficiente y oportuna.” You never have to negotiate an exit with the donor carrier — which is precisely the friction that kills portability in countries that got the design wrong.

The only document they may ask for is your DPI. Article 7 a) is unusually blunt for a Guatemalan statute: the request must be simple, physical or electronic, and “debera requerirse unicamente el Documento Personal de Identificacion del solicitante” (plus proof of representation for a company). Then: “Queda expresamente prohibido solicitar presentacion de factura, contrato, comprobante de numero u otros requisitos que puedan retrasar o impedir la portabilidad numerica.”

Foreigners, read that clause twice. Article 7 a) names the DPI, the Guatemalan identity document, and nothing else. It does not name a passport, and it does not say what a foreign resident without a DPI should present instead. Whether a passport is accepted for a port is exactly the kind of gap the missing regulation would settle, and it has not been settled. Do not plan around an answer nobody has published.

Three days, and three hours. Article 4 f) again, because Guatemalan coverage garbles it constantly: “la portabilidad debera hacerse efectiva en un plazo que no exceda de tres (3) dias, tomando en cuenta que el periodo maximo de interrupcion del servicio de telecomunicaciones/TIC sera de tres (3) horas.” Three days for the move. Three hours of downtime inside it. At least one published law-firm note describes a “three hours maximum from the request submission” limit, which is the interruption cap wearing the deadline’s badge.

Free — and the operators pay. Article 6 makes the operators carry implementation, administration, infrastructure and staffing costs, and ends: “Para el usuario, la portabilidad numerica sera gratuita.”

What can block you. Article 3 f) and Article 4 d) together: the line must be active; it must not already be inside another port request; the account must carry no liquid, enforceable debt; a postpaid bill must not be in arrears; and a service suspended for a legal cause cannot be ported. Prepaid users get an explicit carve-out — “la portabilidad no estara sujeta a un saldo minimo.”

Your handset contract survives the port. Article 4 e): porting “no exime el cumplimiento de obligaciones contractuales relacionadas con equipos propiedad del Proveedor Donante, o que fueron adquiridos en virtud de un contrato postpago con plazo definido.” You can move the number; you still owe for the phone.

Your bundle survives too. Article 4 h): where the phone line came bundled with residential or business internet or cable TV, dropping the phone line does not drop the rest of the bundle.

Not every operator is bound. Article 11 rewrites Article 22 Bis of the Ley General de Telecomunicaciones so that Rural Service Operators are exempt from a list that expressly includes “Portabilidad del Numero”, defining a rural commercial network operator as one holding less than two percent of the fixed numbering assigned under the National Numbering Plan.

Article 9: the part that already protects you, and is barely reported

If you split your year between Guatemala and somewhere else, this is the clause that matters, and it took effect the day the law did.

“Los prestadores de servicios de telecomunicaciones, tanto en modalidades postpago como prepago, no podran ejecutar la desactivacion definitiva de la tarjeta SIM ni la liberacion del codigo IMSI asociado, como consecuencia exclusiva de la mora en el pago del servicio o del agotamiento del saldo, sin que medie solicitud expresa por parte del usuario.” — Decreto 14-2025, Article 9

And the follow-through:

“En los casos de suspension por incumplimiento de pago en servicios postpago, o por falta de recarga en servicios prepago, el operador debera garantizar la conservacion de la numeracion asignada y la vigencia del medio de acceso (SIM), permitiendo la reactivacion inmediata una vez regularizada la obligacion de pago o realizada la recarga correspondiente.”

What Article 9 does and does not promise

Article 9 also carries an unrelated but important power: on a competent judge’s order, the SIT “ordenara el bloqueo inmediato de numeros telefonicos y/o equipos terminales asociados a delitos de extorsion u otros delitos cometidos mediante telefonia”, and operators must execute within 24 hours of notification. That is the legal hook behind number and handset blocking in extortion cases.

Keeping a Guatemalan number alive from abroad: what is published, and what is not

Here the sourcing stops, and this page stops with it.

Neither national operator published a readable line-expiry or balance-validity term on 17 September 2026. This is what was tried:

So this page publishes no prepaid validity window, no minimum recharge, and no deactivation period for Tigo or Claro, because neither operator published one that could be read. Anyone quoting you a specific number of days is quoting something they did not get from the carrier’s own published terms.

What you can rely on is the statute: under Article 9, letting the balance run out is no longer, by itself, a lawful reason for the operator to destroy the number. That is a stronger protection than any carrier FAQ would have given you anyway.

Practically, from abroad:

• Keep the line topped up rather than testing Article 9. A small recharge is cheaper than an argument with a call centre, and the clean path from the United States is covered on mobile top-ups to Guatemala, which sets out what Ding and BOSS Revolution actually publish.
• Keep the physical SIM. Article 9 protects “la vigencia del medio de acceso (SIM)” — the access medium, not a promise to re-issue one you threw away.
• If you are travelling rather than moving, an eSIM is usually the better tool than a second physical line; see the Guatemala eSIM guide.
• If the phone you are keeping alive is a US line, the constraint is your American carrier’s long-stay clause, not Guatemalan law — the US-phone guide covers the roaming caps that end multi-month stays.

What would change this page

One event: the publication of the SIT’s Reglamento de la Ley de Portabilidad Numérica, and the Acuerdo Gubernativo carrying it. When that lands, the missing pieces — the request form, the operators’ response clock, the Portability Committee’s membership, and whether a passport works in place of a DPI — become knowable. Until then, everything on the porting half of this page is a right without a procedure.

Check sit.gob.gt before you act on any carrier’s promise.

Related pages

• Guatemala phone plans — all live Tigo and Claro plans, priced
• Buying a SIM card in Guatemala as a foreigner
• Will my US phone work in Guatemala?
• Guatemala eSIM options
• Mobile top-ups to Guatemala from the USA
• Phone plan comparison and carrier coverage notes

Sources

All read 2026-09-17.

• Decreto Número 14-2025, Ley de Portabilidad Numérica en Servicios de Telefonía — Diario de Centro América No. 58, 28 November 2025 (Congreso de la República PDF)
• Congreso de la República — “Ley de portabilidad numérica sin reglamento a una semana de la fecha límite”
• La Hora, 26 May 2026 — Portabilidad numérica sigue estancada: reglamento no aparece y el tiempo se agota
• La Hora, 19 July 2026 — Sala Sexta ordena a la SIT emitir el reglamento tras amparo de diputado
• La Hora, 11 August 2026 — Reglamento de portabilidad numérica da un paso clave
• La Hora, 24 August 2026 — Guatemala se acerca a la portabilidad numérica
• Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (SIT) — checked for a published portability regulation; none found

Quotations from Decreto 14-2025 are transcribed from the scanned gazette PDF served by the Congress of the Republic; the scan’s OCR drops Spanish accents, which is why the quoted Spanish appears unaccented.