Decree No. 13,135, signed on October 9, was published in Brazil's Federal Official Gazette (Diário Oficial da União) on October 13, 2026. It rewrites the rules for SAC, the consumer service channels (Serviço de Atendimento ao Consumidor) of sectors regulated by Brazil's federal government, telecom included. According to Convergência Digital, the new customer service decree takes effect 20 days after publication. For a regional ISP in Brazil, that leaves only a few weeks to review the IVR, the WhatsApp chatbot flow and the support team's schedule.
The headlines focus on hours and wait times. For anyone running broadband support, three articles matter more, because read together they demand resolution: the consumer cannot be made to repeat a request, service has to continue until the case is closed, and the customer can only be sent to another channel when in-person service is indispensable. ISPs that already solve a good share of cases on first contact have less to adjust.
What is Brazil's new SAC decree (Decree 13,135/2026)?
Decree 13,135/2026 is the federal rule that implements the customer service part of Brazil's Consumer Protection Code, setting live agent hours, a cap on menu levels, wait times and response deadlines. SAC covers both phone and electronic channels, and the text explicitly names chat on websites, apps and instant messaging. Sales and sign-up interactions are outside its scope.
Under Article 1, the decree applies to providers of services regulated by the federal executive branch that meet the criteria set by the competent agency or regulator, which for an ISP is Anatel, Brazil's telecom regulator. According to Teletime, Brazil's National Consumer Secretariat (Senacon) will be able to inspect and penalize noncompliance, without limiting Anatel's own powers.
What changes in ISP customer service
For providers subject to the decree, the objective requirements are these:
- At least one electronic channel running 24 hours a day, with real-time human service from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week (Article 12).
- A mandatory phone line, also staffed by a person from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day (Article 14).
- No more than five levels to complete a request, with an option to cancel immediately and to speak to a person at any level, including the first (Articles 13 and 16).
- A wait of up to 20 seconds for an agent in at least 80% of requests and up to 300 seconds in the rest (Article 15).
- Calls dropped during human service returned within 300 seconds, with the ticket number and using what the consumer already provided (Article 14).
- No advertising at any stage, including while on hold (Article 6), and no request for data as a condition for reaching a person (Article 8).
- Non-urgent complaints answered within seven calendar days, and history, recordings and messages kept for the periods set by the decree, according to the Convergência Digital summary.
Sundays tend to hurt the most. Many small operations keep only technical on-call staff over the weekend, and the decree requires people answering chat and phone from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on those days too. Next comes cancellation in the first menu. A retention flow that hides the option behind three steps goes against the rule.
Can ISPs use AI in customer service under the decree?
Yes. Article 3, paragraph 3, allows automated procedures, including artificial intelligence, for triage, internal routing and resolution of requests, as long as the consumer can reach real-time human service during the required hours. AI can solve the problem, but it cannot stand between the subscriber and a person. To actually solve anything, it has to act on the equipment, because most slowness and Wi-Fi tickets are decided at the CPE.
In IXC ACS, the AI assistant used by tier 1 reads the router or ONU, compares optical power against the alarm range the ISP configured, lists connected devices, runs a speed test from the CPE and changes the Wi-Fi password on both bands, asking for confirmation before a reboot. For self-service, ISPs that have the Opa IA module in Opa! Suite, IXC Soft's customer service platform, can use the MCP integration to let the service AI run diagnostics, change Wi-Fi settings and reboot the equipment, with every action recorded in the ACS event logs.
The ACS handles the CPE. The agent button, the queue, wait times and cancellation belong to the ISP's service channel, and no tool makes an operation compliant on its own. When you design the flow, keep in mind that Opa IA identifies the equipment by the subscriber's Brazilian tax ID (CPF or CNPJ) or PPPoE login. Since Article 8 bans making human service conditional on prior data, the agent option should appear before that request. And when the CPE is offline in the ACS, the AI stops the tests, so that subscriber needs to be routed to a person.
Why making subscribers repeat the problem is now a risk
Article 6, item II, bans asking consumers to repeat a request already registered in the first contact, unless there is a well-founded technical reason, and Article 7 requires following the case through to the end without forcing the consumer to get in touch again. Article 18 adds that the system must give the agent access to the history of requests tied to the same issue.
At an ISP, the one who runs into this is the subscriber calling for the third time in a week who, on every call, gets asked again whether the light is red, reboots the router and runs a speed test on their phone. What gets lost at shift change is the technical history: what was changed on the equipment, which diagnostic ran and what it showed.
The IXC ACS assistant summarizes each closed conversation and can answer what has already been done on that device, and the system logs record who ran each action and when, including actions triggered from Opa! Suite. Repeating the speed test after changing the Wi-Fi channel has a clear technical justification, while redoing the whole questionnaire has none, and exactly where that exception ends is a question for your legal team.
When should you send a technician to the subscriber's home?
A technician should go out when the CPE data shows a problem that can't be fixed remotely. The decree doesn't mention field visits. It bans referring the consumer to another channel, except for in-person service when indispensable (Articles 13 and 16), which covers, for example, the agent who tells the customer to open a ticket by email. In practice, that means solving the request in the channel where it came in and, when the fix requires someone at the home, recording why.
Optical power below the minimum, an ONU that won't sync or a broken cable call for a technician. A forgotten password, a channel crowded by the neighbors' networks, a phone stuck on 2.4 GHz two rooms away from the router, or good speed at the CPE with slowness only over Wi-Fi can all be handled remotely. The Diagnostics tab in the ACS runs a speed test from the equipment, latency tests, scans of nearby networks and host connectivity checks. Support for each test varies by model and firmware.
In the case IXC Soft published in its ROI calculator, based on tens of thousands of real support interactions at a Brazilian ISP over 6 months (2025 to 2026), subscribers whose CPE was in IXC ACS had 62% fewer truck rolls than those whose CPE wasn't, and repeat contacts fell by 6.2 percentage points. It's one specific operation, and results depend on each ISP's profile. We wrote more about this in the benefits of remote support.
Frequently asked questions
Does Brazil's SAC decree apply to small ISPs? It covers providers of regulated services that meet the criteria set by the regulator, which for an ISP is Anatel. Since the size criteria depend on the agency, follow the complementary regulation and confirm with your legal team what applies to your operation.
Can an ISP provide support only through WhatsApp? Under the text of the decree, no. Article 14 makes a phone channel mandatory, and WhatsApp can serve as your 24-hour electronic channel as long as it offers human service from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
Does a chatbot count as a service level? The decree caps the levels needed to complete a request at five and treats menus and automated steps as part of the service. The safest approach is to count every bot step and keep the agent and cancellation options visible in all of them.
Next steps for your ISP
The work can start next week, even before Anatel details its criteria:
- Map the current IVR and chatbot flow and count the steps to resolution. If there are more than five, cut.
- Put the cancel and talk-to-an-agent options in the first menu, without asking for a tax ID before the subscriber reaches a person.
- Build a human schedule from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, on chat and phone, and start measuring wait times.
- Set up callbacks for dropped calls and check that history, recordings and messages are kept for the required periods.
- Revise the tier 1 script so agents don't repeat questions already on record, and write an objective rule for when to send a technician.
The fifth item usually takes the longest, because it depends on the agent being able to see the subscriber's equipment during the conversation. If you want to see how IXC ACS fits into that flow, use the contact button at the bottom of the page.