By Vaughan O’Grady
The long-awaited scrapping of roaming charges between Brazil and Chile, promised by a free trade agreement between the two countries some years ago, finally looks like happening.
As Brazilian news service Teletime reports, mobile operators and MVNOs that offer international roaming services to users passing through Chile will soon be obliged to supply them with the same tariffs and prices as they offer in Brazil – whether for calls, SMS or mobile data use.
According to TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Brazilian mobile operators have until 25 January – two weeks – to adapt their international roaming offers so that there are no longer roaming charges between Brazil and Chile. The deadline was confirmed by the board of directors at the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) earlier this week.
The Brazilian regulator has indicated that it intends to closely monitor compliance with the new rules, though how and when that will happen has yet to be defined.
The decree making this effective was published almost a year ago, on 26 January 2022. It noted that roaming charges must be cancelled within one year of the decree being signed – hence the late January deadline set by Anatel. How and when Chile will reciprocate does not seem to have been announced yet.
This decree itself was a consequence of the signing of a free trade agreement between Brazil and Chile in Santiago in late 2018.
Support does seem to be growing for an end to roaming charges in Latin America, as we have been reporting. However, if this initiative proves successful, the process could receive a massive boost.
