The SAC decree and Anatel's RGC: how to prove your 0800 and IVR were up

What is the SAC decree?

The SAC decree is Decree No. 11,034 of April 5, 2022 (Decreto nº 11.034/2022). It regulates the Código de Defesa do Consumidor (Brazil’s Consumer Protection Code) to set the rules for the SAC (the customer-service channel) of providers of services regulated by the federal Executive Branch. Each regulator applies those rules to its own sector, taking the provider’s size into account.

Art. 1 sets the scope: the decree applies “to providers of services regulated by the federal Executive Branch”, and its sole paragraph tells regulators to consider “the size of the provider of the regulated service”. Art. 2 defines the SAC as support delivered through several integrated channels to handle requests such as information, questions, complaints, disputes, and the suspension or cancellation of contracts and services. Offering and selling products is left out. (Quotations from Brazilian rules in this guide are our English translations of the official Portuguese text.)

One detail changes how it reads: the decree does not list sectors by name. Whoever defines how it applies to each sector is that sector’s regulator (arts. 5, 13 and 14). So “does the decree apply to my company?” has two parts: whether your service is regulated by the federal Executive Branch, and what your regulator’s rule says.

When did Decree 11,034 take effect?

Decree 11,034 took effect on October 3, 2022. Art. 18 says it applies “one hundred and eighty days after the date of its publication”, and it was published in the Diário Oficial da União (the federal official gazette) on April 6, 2022. The same decree revoked Decree No. 6,523/2008 (Decreto nº 6.523/2008), the previous SAC rule.

The revocation is in art. 17. Anyone still citing the 2008 rules in contracts, manuals or IVR scripts is citing a text that no longer applies. The text on the Planalto (presidential) website carries a notice that it does not replace the version published in the Diário Oficial; for formal use, the official publication is the reference.

What does the decree require of phone support?

Decree 11,034 requires access to the SAC to be free (art. 3), available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through at least one channel (art. 4), and phone support to exist (art. 4, § 2), with at least 8 hours a day of live-agent support and complaint and cancellation options in the first menu (art. 5).

Article	What it says	What it means for the 0800 and the IVR
Art. 3	Access to the SAC is free and handling requests creates no cost for the consumer	The support number cannot charge the caller
Art. 4, main text and § 1	Uninterrupted access, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through at least one of the integrated channels	The 24-hour channel can be another one; the decree does not require it to be the phone
Art. 4, § 2	Access through phone support is mandatory, under the terms of art. 5	The phone line has to exist and work during the hours in art. 5
Art. 4, § 4	Initial access to an agent cannot depend on the consumer providing data first	The IVR cannot demand a CPF (taxpayer ID) or contract number before letting the caller speak to someone
Art. 5, I	Support hours of no less than 8 hours a day, with live-agent support	An agent available at least 8 hours a day
Art. 5, II	The first menu must include the complaint and cancellation options	The IVR’s greeting and first menu have to offer those options
Art. 5, III	Maximum wait time to reach an agent and to be transferred, set by the regulators	The number comes from the sector’s rule, not from the decree

Source for every row: the text of Decree 11,034/2022 on the Planalto website.

Free access (art. 3)

Art. 3 says that “access to the SAC shall be free and handling requests shall create no cost for the consumer”. In Brazilian numbering, the code that meets this by design is 0800 (toll-free): under art. 18 of Anatel Resolution 749/2022, on 0800 the subscribing organization takes responsibility for payment, “making it a call at no cost to the originating user”. Under the same resolution, the 0300 and 0303 codes have their cost shared between the caller and the subscriber. The guide Why won’t an 0800 connect from a mobile phone? covers the origin restrictions that tend to show up under this billing model.

24 hours through at least one channel (art. 4)

The main text of art. 4 requires access “uninterruptedly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week”, and § 1 says this will be guaranteed through “at least one of the integrated support channels”. Read literally, the 24-hour channel can be an app or a website, while the phone line, mandatory under § 2, follows the hours in art. 5. § 3 allows the SAC to be interrupted when the service is not available for use or purchase, subject to the sector’s rule. §§ 5 and 6 prohibit advertising during the wait without prior consent and allow informational messages.

The minimum for phone support (art. 5)

Art. 5 lists what regulators must observe on the phone line: at least 8 hours a day with live-agent support (item I), complaint and cancellation in the first menu (item II) and a maximum wait time (item III). The sole paragraph lets regulators require more than 8 hours of live-agent support. Art. 15, § 5, gives the National Consumer Secretariat (Secretaria Nacional do Consumidor) the same option for providers whose SAC performs poorly.

What does Decree 11,034 not set?

Decree 11,034 does not set the maximum wait time, the resolution deadline per sector or the deadline for technically processing a cancellation. On all of these, it leaves the decision to the regulator. Nor does it set live-agent hours above 8: it only allows the regulator to require them.

The points where the decree delegates to the regulator:

• Maximum wait time (art. 5, III): to reach an agent directly and to be transferred to the right department. The decree requires a maximum to exist, but does not say what it is.
• More hours of live-agent support (art. 5, sole paragraph).
• Deadline for resolving requests (art. 13, § 4). The decree sets only the response deadline: seven calendar days from registration (art. 13, main text).
• Deadline for technically processing a cancellation (art. 14, sole paragraph). Under art. 14, cancellation takes effect immediately, unless that processing is needed.
• The provider’s size (art. 1, sole paragraph).

In practice, anyone looking for “the maximum SAC wait time” needs their own sector’s rule. For telecom, Anatel’s RGC leaves that time and the definition of “first menu” to the Implementation Group (art. 18, § 3, of Resolution 765/2023).

What records does the SAC decree already require you to keep?

The SAC decree requires recordings of calls to the SAC to be kept for at least 90 days and the record of each interaction for at least two years after resolution, and requires a ticket number for every request (art. 12). None of these records shows whether the 0800 was up when nobody could get through.

Art. 12 guarantees the consumer can follow up on a request “by means of a numeric record or another kind of electronic procedure”. § 3 makes “keeping the recording of the call made to the SAC” mandatory for at least ninety days, and § 4 lets the consumer request access to it within that period. § 5 requires the interaction record to be kept for at least two years.

All of these records come from a call that got through. When the 0800 won’t connect, there is no call, no recording and no ticket number. A gap in the records over a period could mean no demand or no channel, and the SAC records alone cannot tell one from the other.

What is Anatel’s RGC?

The RGC is the Regulamento Geral de Direitos do Consumidor de Serviços de Telecomunicações (General Regulation on Consumer Rights for Telecommunications Services), approved by Anatel Resolution No. 765/2023. It covers fixed telephony, mobile telephony, fixed broadband and pay TV, and has been in force since September 1, 2025. It is the telecom sector’s rule that applies the SAC decree.

The link to the decree is in the text itself: art. 3, V, of the Annex defines Phone Support “under the terms set out in this Regulation and in Decree No. 11,034 of April 5, 2022”. Art. 1 of the Annex covers the STFC (fixed-line telephone service), the SMP (mobile service), the SCM (multimedia communication service, which includes broadband) and pay-TV services; art. 2 excludes IoT-only connections.

When it took effect is noted on Anatel’s Resolution 765 page: under Ruling (Acórdão) No. 228 of August 28, 2024, most of the regulation took effect on September 1, 2025, and the previous RGC (Resolution 632/2014) was revoked on the same date.

Art. 15: 24-hour phone support

Art. 15 says Phone Support must: “I - be free; II - take calls originating from the STFC and the SMP; III - be available uninterruptedly, 24 (twenty-four) hours a day, 7 (seven) days a week; and, IV - have a live agent available 24 (twenty-four) hours for urgent requests and, for all others, from 6 (six) to 22 (twenty-two) hours, uninterruptedly, 7 (seven) days a week.”

Here the difference from the decree is direct: for telecom providers, the phone line has to be available 24 hours a day, not just some channel. Item II matters too: the number has to take calls from landlines (STFC) and mobile phones (SMP). § 1 lets Anatel change the live-agent hours, and § 2 leaves the definition of “urgent requests” to the Operational Manual.

Art. 18: the first menu

Art. 18 says the first menu of Phone Support must offer, at a minimum, the options of “I - terminating the contract in an automated way, without an agent’s involvement; II - registering a complaint; and, III - live-agent support”. § 1 requires the option to speak to an agent in every submenu, and § 3 leaves the maximum wait time and the definition of first menu to the Implementation Group.

Art. 91: small providers

Art. 91 covers Small Providers (Prestadoras de Pequeno Porte): their phone support must operate “for at least 8 (eight) hours, uninterruptedly, on business days”. Art. 90 lists the articles that apply to them, and from art. 15 it includes items I and II (free calls and calls from landlines and mobile phones), but not items III and IV (24 hours and the live-agent hours).

Point	Decree 11,034/2022	RGC, Resolution 765/2023
Who it covers	Providers of services regulated by the federal Executive Branch, as each sector’s regulator determines	Fixed and mobile telephony, broadband and pay-TV providers
In force since	October 3, 2022	September 1, 2025
Free of charge	Art. 3	Art. 15, I
Available 24 hours	Access to the SAC, through at least one channel (art. 4)	Phone support itself (art. 15, III)
Live-agent support	At least 8 hours a day (art. 5, I)	24 hours for urgent requests, 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. for the rest (art. 15, IV)
First menu	Complaint and cancellation (art. 5, II)	Automated cancellation, complaint and live agent (art. 18)
Maximum wait time	Set by the regulators (art. 5, III)	Defined by the Implementation Group (art. 18, § 3)
Small providers	The regulator takes size into account (art. 1)	8 hours on business days (art. 91)

How do I prove the 0800 was up?

To prove the 0800 was up, you need a record made at the time, from outside the company, showing for each time slot whether the call connected and whether the IVR answered with the right message. Neither the decree nor the RGC says how to prove availability; scheduled test calls are one way to produce that record.

The company’s own systems tell the story from the inside. A PBX that is powered on and a trunk that is registered show the equipment was working, not that a customer outside could get through. When the problem is on the carrier’s route or in a swapped IVR, the dashboard stays green.

What a test call records

Monitor, 2N5’s managed service, places real test calls to each support number: 0800, 0300, 4004 and landline numbers. Each monitored number is a voice circuit, with its own schedule and the people who should know when it fails. The call goes out from the 2N5 platform, listens to what answers and hangs up. For each call it records:

• the time and the number called;
• whether the call connected or was rejected, with the SIP code the route returned, such as a SIP 503, and the Q.850 cause when the network provides it;
• whether what answered was what was expected: during setup, 2N5 records the IVR’s reference greeting, and each call compares what it heard with that recording. A carrier announcement saying the number does not exist does not pass;
• whether audio got through, and the voice quality measured on that audio, MOS-LQO.

SIP codes follow RFC 3261, and Q.850 causes arrive in the Reason header defined by RFC 6432. This is the kind of data the carrier can find in its own records.

A note on personal data: the audio of a test call is kept only when what answers is the recording or the IVR on file, encrypted and for 90 days. A person’s voice is never kept; if the number could be answered by someone, that person first hears that it is an automated test.

Why the interval between calls matters

A record only shows what it measured. If the test runs once an hour, a 40-minute outage can slip between two good calls, and the period comes out as available. At Monitor’s default pace, each number gets a call every 15 minutes. When a call fails, it is repeated three times, every 2 minutes; four failures in a row open an incident, and two good calls in a row confirm recovery.

The margin math: an outage that starts right after a good call is seen at most 15 minutes later, on the next call. With retries every 2 minutes, the fourth failure in a row comes 6 minutes after the first (2 + 2 + 2). An isolated blip, which fails once and recovers, does not open an incident and does not enter the calculation.

Fixed times, nights and weekends

The obligation in art. 15, III, of the RGC is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each monitored number has its own schedule, at intervals or at fixed times, including nights and weekends. Only a schedule that covers the full obligation hours lets you say “tested throughout the period”.

The report that documents the year

Every month, Monitor emails a service report to the people the company chose, in Portuguese or English. It gives each circuit’s availability for the month and for the last 12 months, which is the figure that closes the year. The 12 monthly reports, each with its 12-month figure, cover the whole year of obligation.

Report section	What it documents
Voice availability	The month and the last 12 months, against the target
Incidents	Each incident, with its severity and duration
Downtime	The total for the period, by circuit
Average response	The time until someone took ownership of each incident
The period, day by day	Which days had a confirmed failure
By circuit and by carrier	The availability of each number and each carrier

Two things keep the figure defensible. First: a period in which 2N5 could not test because of a problem on 2N5’s side stays out of the calculation and is shown separately; the monitoring’s lack of visibility never turns into circuit unavailability. Second: scheduled maintenance has to be recorded beforehand, in a maintenance window with a start and an end. The guide Telephony SLA: yearly and monthly calculation shows the math, and the SLA calculator does it for any target.

An example with demo data: 99.89% availability for the month and 99.91% over the last 12 months, a 99.90% target met, 4 incidents and 3 h 55 min of downtime in the month.

What does a test call not prove?

A test call proves that the number connected from the origin it calls from and that the IVR answered with the expected message. It does not prove the wait time to reach an agent, the live-agent hours, the content of each menu option or that the number connected from every carrier.

Requirement	Article	Does the test call show it?
Phone channel available and answering	Decree art. 4, § 2; RGC art. 15, III	Yes, for each tested time slot, from 2N5’s origin
The right IVR answering	No specific article; it is what the caller hears	Yes, the greeting is compared with the reference recording
Free for the caller	Decree art. 3; RGC art. 15, I	No; it depends on the code contracted, such as 0800
Calls from landlines and mobile phones	RGC art. 15, II	Only from the origin the test calls from
Live-agent support during the required hours	Decree art. 5, I; RGC art. 15, IV	No; the call hears the greeting and hangs up
Maximum wait time	Decree art. 5, III; RGC art. 18, § 3	No
First-menu options	Decree art. 5, II; RGC art. 18	Only what is in the compared greeting
Recordings and ticket numbers	Decree art. 12	No; these are the SAC’s own records

Each origin follows its own route to the 0800, and one route can fail while the others work. 2N5’s test does not replace a test from each mobile carrier when the suspected cause is an origin restriction.

How do I build the SAC availability record?

The SAC availability record is built from four pieces: the list of numbers consumers can dial, what should answer each one, a test schedule that covers all the obligation hours and a report kept month by month. With that, the company can answer with data when someone claims the phone line was not answering.

1. List every published number. Art. 7 of the decree requires the SAC access options to appear in the provider’s documents and channels; every published number, 0800, 0300 or 4004, is a number someone will dial.
2. Define what should answer each number. The reference recording tells “the right IVR answered” apart from “the carrier’s announcement answered”.
3. Cover all the obligation hours. For a telecom provider, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (art. 15, III, of the RGC). For other sectors, the hours the regulator’s rule sets.
4. Record maintenance beforehand. A maintenance window with a start and an end, scheduled before it begins. Whatever runs past the window is an outage.
5. Keep the monthly reports. The 12-month figure in each report is what closes the year.
6. Take the evidence to the carrier. The time, the number called, the SIP code and the Q.850 cause of each test call locate the failure on the route. The 0800 and IVR monitoring page shows how Monitor handles each case, and SLA reports shows the report.

What this guide is not

This guide is not legal advice. It summarizes the text of Decree 11,034/2022 and Anatel Resolution 765/2023, in the versions published on the official websites on October 7, 2026, and shows one technical way to document the availability of the phone channel.

Three questions are for your legal team: whether your company’s service is subject to the decree; what your regulator’s rule says about phone support, wait times and live-agent support; and what weight a record of test calls carries in an administrative or court proceeding. The text that governs is the one published in the Diário Oficial da União.

Frequently asked questions

Does the SAC decree require the 0800 to work 24 hours a day?

Not exactly. Art. 4 of Decree 11,034/2022 requires access to the SAC to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through at least one of the integrated channels, which does not have to be the phone. Phone support is mandatory, with at least 8 hours a day of live-agent support. For telecom, Anatel's RGC requires the phone line to be available 24 hours a day.

What is the maximum SAC wait time under Decree 11,034?

The decree does not set a number. Art. 5, III, says the regulators must set the maximum wait time to reach an agent and to be transferred to the right department. The number is set per sector in the regulator's rule; for telecom, the RGC leaves that time to the Implementation Group (Grupo de Implantação) (art. 18, § 3).

What changed with the RGC in Resolution 765/2023?

Since September 1, 2025, phone support from telephone, internet and pay-TV providers must be free, take calls from landlines and mobile phones and be available 24 hours a day, with a live agent 24 hours for urgent requests and from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. for everything else (art. 15). The first menu must offer automated cancellation, complaints and a live agent (art. 18).

How do I prove the SAC was available overnight?

With records made at the time, from outside the company. A test call to the 0800 at short intervals, overnight included, leaves for each time slot the call's result, the SIP code returned and whether the IVR answered with the expected message. Added up, those records give the period's availability.

Does this guide replace a legal review?

No. It summarizes the official text of the decree and the RGC and shows one way to document the availability of the phone channel. Whether your company is subject to each rule, and how your regulator's rule applies the decree to your sector, are questions for your legal team.

Sources

1. Decree No. 11,034/2022 (Decreto nº 11.034/2022): guidelines and rules for the SAC (arts. 1 to 18)
2. Anatel, Resolution No. 765/2023 (RGC): phone support, arts. 15, 18 and 91, and notes on when it took effect
3. Anatel, Resolution No. 749/2022 (Regulamento de Numeração, the numbering regulation), art. 18: the 0800 code is free for the caller
4. RFC 3261: SIP and the classes of response codes
5. RFC 6432: Q.850 causes in the Reason header of SIP responses

Keep reading

• Voice circuit monitoring: the complete guide
• 0800 and IVR monitoring
• SLA reports
• Telephony SLA: yearly and monthly calculation
• 0800 down: how to monitor 0800 and IVR
• Why won't an 0800 connect from a mobile phone?
• SLA calculator