RF and Electrical Equipment Compliance in South America in 2026

On October 13, 2025, Brazil's telecom regulator ANATEL fined Mercado Livre 6.27 million reais for letting sellers list unhomologated telecommunications products, including security cameras, TV boxes and signal jammers, on its marketplace. The penalty started at a token 2,640 reais, then climbed nearly 2,400 times over after two appeals, once ANATEL recalculated it against the actual volume of irregular units the company itself admitted selling. Six months later, in April 2026, a federal appeals court reinstated ANATEL's marketplace liability rule against Amazon after a lower court had briefly suspended it, sending the fight to Brazil's Superior Court of Justice.

That single dispute captures the regulatory mood across the region in 2026. Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Brazil are all rewriting how radio, telecom and electrical equipment gets certified, on four different timelines, with four different agencies, and none of it harmonized with the other three. A device cleared for sale in Sao Paulo carries no legal weight in Santiago, Bogota or Buenos Aires, and the compliance path in each market is currently mid-transition rather than settled.

For a manufacturer or importer selling the same Wi-Fi router, IoT sensor or electrical appliance across the continent, 2026 is not a year to rely on last year's playbook. Three of the five major markets changed their equipment authorization rules in the past twelve months, and a fourth takes effect this September.

Which regulators control equipment approval in South America's biggest markets?

Each country runs its own agency with no mutual recognition between them. In Brazil, ANATEL administers the Regulamento de Avaliacao da Conformidade e de Homologacao de Produtos para Telecomunicacoes under Resolucao 715/2019, covering every radio, telecom and broadcasting product, while a separate agency, INMETRO, certifies general electrical product safety under Portaria 200/2021 and, for low voltage devices specifically, the consolidated Portaria 674/2024. In Argentina, ENACOM runs the Registro de Actividades y Materiales de Telecomunicaciones, known as RAMATEL, the mandatory registry for any equipment using the radio spectrum. In Chile, the Subsecretaria de Telecomunicaciones (SUBTEL) certifies short range and licensed radio equipment under Resolucion Exenta 1.985 of 2017. In Colombia, the Comision de Regulacion de Comunicaciones (CRC) sets the technical conformity rules for mobile terminals and fixed and satellite phones through Resolucion CRC 6129 of 2020 and its implementing circulars.

None of these four regimes recognizes another's certificate, and none defers to FCC or CE test data by default. A product homologated by ANATEL still needs a separate RAMATEL registration in Argentina, a separate SUBTEL pathway in Chile, and separate CRC conformity documentation in Colombia. Mapping which of your SKUs already holds which country's certificate, and which still needs one, is exactly the kind of cross-jurisdiction question Obsidian's regulatory monitoring is built to answer from verified tier-0 sources instead of four separate spreadsheets.

Why is Brazil making marketplaces pay for other people's non-compliant products?

Because ANATEL decided a listing is not just a shop window. Resolucao 780/2025, approved August 1, 2025, rewrote Articles 83 to 85 of the 2019 homologation regulation to make marketplaces and any digital platform involved in a sale, even one that only runs the advertising, jointly liable alongside the seller for offering unhomologated telecommunications products. The obligations are specific: verify that a listed model actually holds valid homologation, display the homologation code in the ad, and take down listings that fail either check.

The Mercado Livre case shows how the penalty math actually works. ANATEL's technical staff recalculated the fine upward twice, from 2,640 reais to 5.45 million and then to 6.27 million reais, after Mercado Livre itself disclosed, in a late filing, that more than 93,000 units of a single irregular security camera model were listed for sale. The regulator treats platform liability fines up to a statutory ceiling of 50 million reais, and can also order listings suspended, which is why the company is now pursuing the dispute through Brazil's Superior Court of Justice rather than absorbing the sanction.

Resolucao 780/2025 made two other changes worth tracking alongside the marketplace rule: it opened a path for refurbished or reconditioned equipment to be homologated when destined for public digital-inclusion programs, and it added a new Title VI-A subjecting data centers that integrate telecommunications networks to their own conformity assessment, though ANATEL suspended enforcement of that specific data center obligation in February 2026 pending further policy work.

What is changing about how radio equipment gets certified in Argentina?

ENACOM is replacing a state-run approval queue with accredited private certifiers. Resolucion 57/2026, published in the Boletin Oficial on February 24, 2026, overhauls RAMATEL by creating a Registro de Agencias de Certificacion de Materiales de Telecomunicaciones, a new registry of private certification agencies that will issue the Certificados de Conformidad underlying homologation, alongside a parallel registry for accredited test laboratories. Companies already accredited by Argentina's national accreditation body under ISO/IEC 17065 can apply for a one year provisional recognition as a certification agency starting from the resolution's publication.

The new RAMATEL regulation takes full effect September 1, 2026; until then, registrations keep processing under the prior 2018 rules and, once granted, remain valid for three years before requalification. The declared goal is speed: shifting the technical evaluation to accredited third parties so ENACOM's own review becomes a documentation check rather than a full technical assessment. For a company already selling into Brazil under Resolucao 715/2019's own designated-certification-body model, the structure will look familiar, but the accreditation list, the fee schedule and the specific technical requirements sit entirely inside ENACOM's own three new registries and require a separate filing.

Did Chile really scrap certification for most radio equipment?

For non-medical short range devices, yes, and the switch is already in force. Resolucion Exenta 737 of 2025, amending SUBTEL's base technical standard Resolucion Exenta 1.985 of 2017, replaced mandatory pre-market certification with a self-declaration regime built around a QR code, for every device category under Article 1 except categories g and h, which cover medical implant communication systems and other medical applications. Those two categories still require a formal Oficio de Certificacion from SUBTEL. Resolucion Exenta 2.219 of November 24, 2025 then adjusted thirteen details of the new regime, including permitting the QR code to sit on the device itself or in accompanying documentation when packaging space is not practical.

The self-declaration track took full effect February 22, 2026. A manufacturer or importer must have an accredited laboratory test report, publish a Spanish-language web page covering commercial data, technical characteristics, the test report and a declaration of conformity, and print a QR code at least one centimeter square linking to that page on the packaging, the device or its accompanying documentation. Equipment already holding a SUBTEL certification issued before February 22, 2026 can simply publish that certificate instead of the full A, B and C sections. SUBTEL has stated it is actively enforcing the new labeling requirement, which means a compliant-looking product with a missing or broken QR link is now the most likely single point of failure in a Chilean market entry.

South America RF and electrical equipment compliance timeline, 2024 to 2026

What should a compliance team actually track across four different regimes?

Start by separating the products that touch radio spectrum from the ones that are purely electrical, because the two tracks answer to different agencies in the same country. In Brazil, that means ANATEL homologation for anything transmitting or receiving RF, and a completely separate INMETRO certification for general electrical safety, with Portaria 674/2024's 12 and 36 month adaptation windows running on their own clock from the regulation's December 2024 publication. Confusing the two, or assuming one covers the other, is one of the most common gaps in a South American market entry file.

Then treat 2026 as a transition year rather than a settled baseline. Argentina's certification model does not stabilize until September 1, 2026, Chile's QR regime only reached full enforcement in February, and Brazil's marketplace liability rule is still moving through appellate courts. A homologation dossier built in early 2026 for any of these three markets may already need a documented review by year end. Obsidian tracks ANATEL, INMETRO, ENACOM, SUBTEL and Colombia's CRC as linked tier-0 sources, with alerts when a resolution like Argentina's 57/2026 or Chile's 2.219 changes a compliance deadline, so a regulatory affairs team can confirm which version of a rule actually applies to a shipment date instead of relying on a summary that predates the latest amendment. Teams already working inside an AI assistant can connect Obsidian's MCP to ask, in plain language, whether a given SKU still qualifies for self-declaration in Chile this month, and get a sourced answer back. See the plans built for product-compliance and regulatory-affairs teams tracking multiple South American jurisdictions at once.