ANATEL is Brazil's telecommunications regulator, and anything carrying a radio or connecting to the public telecoms network has to clear homologação before it can be imported or sold. Plenty of material in circulation still describes Category I, II and III. That classification went out with Resolução 242/2000 and 323/2002, both revoked by Resolução 715/2019, and it has been dead since 2020.
What runs today is product type or product family. Each type carries its own ANATEL technical requirement, and the assessment model is written into it: either certification, where an accredited certification body (OCD) issues a conformity certificate, or a declaration of conformity. How many test items land on your desk, and how many months of queueing, follows from that single step.
The holder has to be a Brazilian legal entity with a CNPJ. An overseas factory cannot file directly; the importer, a local subsidiary or an authorised representative holds the certification, and complaints, enforcement and recalls all land on that entity.
The paperwork that comes back most often is the Portuguese set. The user manual, installation guide and safety warnings all have to be in Portuguese, with label artwork and the nameplate updated to match. Schematics and specification sheets, which never reach the end user, can stay in English. If the holder changes mid-project, the change is registered in the system, and how that runs follows the OCD's current process; moving it after submission costs more than settling it at kick-off.
Testing does not have to happen in Brazil. The order of preference puts a locally CGCRE-accredited third party first, and overseas laboratories are also acceptable provided they are accredited by an ILAC member, with the report going to the OCD for evaluation and any gaps covered by supplementary testing. A CE or FCC report cannot simply be swapped in for an ANATEL one, but items that already pass do not have to be run from scratch.
Samples generally run to two or three units, more for cellular products. RF and EMC are the baseline, handheld and body-worn devices add SAR, and cellular terminals run the network-related items on top. Since April 2025, new applications for phones and access terminal stations have had to support 4G and above, with voice carried over VoLTE; a model that keeps only a 3G path cannot even be filed.
Once the report is out, the OCD reviews the technical file and the test data and issues a deficiency notice for anything missing. One or two rounds back and forth is normal, and each round pushes the schedule out by one to two weeks.
The technical file is submitted by the OCD, not uploaded in full by the holder. The holder registers with SEI-Anatel and issues the OCD an electronic power of attorney; without that authorisation in place there is no way into the workflow.
The platform is also changing hands. Mosaico-SCH is being retired in favour of Certifica, with full operation expected around September 2026. Projects sitting on that window should confirm the system status with their OCD rather than plan against the old procedure.
On approval, ANATEL assigns the homologação number. It has to be printed on the product and on the packaging, and the accompanying documentation is Portuguese too.
The marking and the number have to be physically in place. Customs reads the number, the certificate and the model as a set, and one missing piece holds the shipment. An e-commerce listing needs the number filled in and the certificate uploaded, and a page without it gets taken down.
Budget twelve to twenty weeks overall, and the trade generally plans on three to five months. Customs and laboratories both slow down around the holidays, so leave some slack in production planning, and run documents and pre-testing in parallel to shave a week or two.
Portuguese paperwork is the first variable. An incomplete translation burns more time than a late submission, and where the terminology in the report and in the manual do not line up, the file goes back for re-checking. The laboratory queue is the second, and waiting weeks ahead of peak season is nothing unusual; lock the slot early rather than hope. Remediation is the one that really hurts, because an RF or SAR failure means a hardware change, and tested items largely start over.
A homologação certificate carries no expiry date. Its force rests on periodic maintenance, and the interval is set by product type against the Ato 7280/2020 list: most wireless consumer products go two years, while optical line terminals, enterprise and industrial data network equipment, multiplexers, coaxial cable and some optical cable run to three.
Let maintenance slip past 180 days and the OCD suspends the conformity certificate; another 180 days without action and it is revoked, taking the homologação with it. An expired certificate cannot be extended, only re-submitted with fresh samples, and the old number does not come across. Change the RF hardware, the antenna or the module model and the original certificate no longer applies, so the new configuration has to be declared after the change. Waiting for a spot check to surface it usually costs more than one round of testing.
The holder is not a paperwork role either: complaints, market surveillance and recalls are all its responsibility, and a mismatch between the shipped product and the test report is grounds for withdrawal. BlueAsia tends to put the label artwork and the Portuguese documents through a pass before submission, because in Brazilian projects the traps in the paperwork catch more files than the traps on the bench.
Contact: King Email: king.guo@cblueasia.comAddress: Building C, Hongjingda Industrial Park, No. 107 Beihuan Road, Shiyan Street, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, China BlueAsia delivers more than service!
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