Blocking fraudulent calls requires telecommunications operators to authenticate and identify calls and to control abusive use of lines.
Provisional Measure No. 1,396/2026 has brought the blocking of fraudulent calls within the scope of the law. Telecommunications operators using public numbering must authenticate calls, identify them to the recipient and bar suspicious ones. For companies, this means that the corporate name may appear on the screen of the person receiving the call. The measure has been in force since its publication, but a large part of the obligations depends on regulation by Anatel (the Brazilian telecommunications regulatory agency).
How operators now share responsibility
The measure allocates tasks along the path of the call. The originating operator authenticates the call. Transit operators preserve that authentication. The operator that delivers the call verifies the authentication before completing it.
Non-authenticated calls will be blocked upon delivery, save for the exceptions that Anatel may establish. Among these, the agency must address essential public services. The use of an access code in breach of the agency’s rules will also be blocked.
What changes for companies that call customers
Where a legal entity originates an authenticated call, the recipient will see the corporate name and the logo, if any. These data will come from a centralised numbering database, supervised by Anatel. In addition to the name, it will bring together the company’s CNPJ (Brazilian corporate taxpayer registration number). The agency may waive registration depending on call volume.
It is therefore worth checking whether the company’s registration details held by the operator are correct. Operators will bear the cost of the database. However, they may charge the companies that originate calls, in an amount still to be set by Anatel.
When call volume becomes abusive use
The operator must block, for fifteen days, the abusive user’s capacity to originate calls. The measure requires two criteria to be met at the same time, on the same day and in respect of the same service. The first is exceeding one thousand calls per access line or ten thousand calls for the user as a whole. The second is having at least 85% of short calls, that is, calls not completed, sent to voicemail or lasting up to six seconds.
Public bodies and providers of healthcare, public security and civil defence services do not constitute abusive use in the exercise of their activities. Those engaged in telemarketing or mass debt collection should review their operations without delay.
The deadlines differ. The blocking of irregular access codes and the limit per access line apply within thirty days of publication. Authentication, identification and the database depend on regulation, which Anatel is to issue within sixty days. Non-compliance subjects offenders to the penalties under Law No. 9,472/1997 (the Brazilian General Telecommunications Law). As this is a provisional measure, its passage through Congress should also be monitored.
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