Brazil rewrites its SAC customer service rules and orders call signing

Brazil rewrites its SAC customer service rules and orders call signing

22 October 2026: Brazil has replaced the rules that govern how companies answer customers by phone and other channels, and has put the fight against spoofed and robotic calls into law. Decree 13,135 sets a mandatory option to reach a person, a maximum of five menu levels and a wait of no more than 20 seconds for at least 80% of contacts, and it revokes Decree 11,034 of April 2022. Provisional Measure 1,396 makes every telephone operator on a call's path sign it digitally and block calls that are unsigned or use irregular numbers.

Not yet independently verified. Not yet independently verified. The decree and provisional measure texts on planalto.gov.br refused our reader, so the rules here come from the Presidency's own summary, which gives no date for when the SAC decree takes effect and no penalty amounts. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Measurable duties in place of principles

The Presidency says both texts were signed on 9 October and published in the Diário Oficial on 13 October. Its summary presents the new SAC decree as swapping general principles that could not be measured for obligations that inspectors can check. The main ones:

• service channels free of charge, 24 hours a day, seven days a week;
• a human agent available as an option, and no more than five service levels to close a request;
• at most 20 seconds' wait for 80% or more of contacts, and 300 seconds for the rest;
• 48 hours to resolve a complaint about an unrequested service or an undue charge;
• call recordings kept for at least 90 days and the history of each request for six months;
• accessibility for people with disabilities kept, priority service for older people added, and customer data protected under the LGPD.

The national consumer secretariat, Senacon, supervises compliance and applies sanctions, alongside consumer bodies and sector regulators.

Signed calls from origin to termination

The provisional measure splits responsibility for authenticating a call between the originating, transit and terminating operators, so that the person called can see before answering whether the number is certified. Unauthenticated calls and calls from irregular numbers are to be blocked, a central database of telephone numbers is created under Anatel's supervision, and a company that abuses calling can have its capacity to place calls suspended for 15 days, on criteria in the text with technical rules left to Anatel.

The government's own figures show the scale: an average of 305,700 unwanted calls a minute, and 161.16 billion calls of six seconds or less in 2025, mostly automated checks on whether a number is live, of which about 24.1 billion reached people. In 92% of cases the person called had no relationship with the company calling. Anatel already runs an Origem Verificada programme, and article 60 of its Resolution 777/2025 gives operators three years to authenticate every call; the measure moves the core duties into law. Some provisions apply at once, others after 30 days, and the rest wait for Anatel rules expected within 60 days. A provisional measure lapses unless Congress converts it into law.

Contact centres and outbound diallers

For a company running its own SAC or buying one from an outsourcer, the 20-second and 80% target, the five-level cap and the 90-day recording rule are things a contact-centre platform's reports must be able to show. Firms that dial customers at volume, including collection and sales operations, depend on their carrier's signing and on clean, registered numbers, because short "is this line live" calls are exactly what the measure targets. Our contact center software category lists 16 products, and we list 356 call center companies.

Sources

• Planalto (gov.br): Governo Federal cria medidas para coibir chamadas indesejadas e fraudes telefônicas e aprimorar Serviço de Atendimento ao Consumidor (SAC), 22 October 2026
• Startupi: Novo decreto do SAC, regras de atendimento ao consumidor, 30 October 2026