Anatel Chief Says the Market, Not the State, Should Decide Where Brazil’s Data Centres Go

Brazil’s telecoms regulator does not want to plan where the country’s data centres are built. Speaking at the Futurecom telecoms fair on Tuesday, October 6, Anatel president Carlos Baigorri said the choice of locations should be left to companies, Estadão reported. “You can’t expect a state agent to be defining where the data centres will be,” he said. “Everything is business, it’s the market.”

Baigorri was blunt about his agency’s limits. “At Anatel, we are not good at doing business. We are not entrepreneurs,” he said, adding that if the regulator tried to plan the sector, the result would not be good. He argued that digital infrastructure, including fibre networks, subsea cables and data centres, should face minimal regulation that leaves companies free to invest, while stressing that fast-moving technology markets still need good rules and legal certainty.

He held up telecoms as the model. Brazil has thousands of fixed broadband providers, three large national mobile operators and new satellite internet entrants, a mix he said guarantees signal quality and broad coverage. “Telecom is no longer a problem in Brazil,” he said. By contrast, he recalled that tight planning of cable TV licences years ago made the service more expensive and kept it from spreading, because businesses that wanted to invest could not get licences.

What it means in practice

The comments come as data centres become the physical base of Brazil’s AI ambitions and a growing policy question. The REDATA tax regime is in force, but builders are still waiting on federal energy and import rules, and bottlenecks on the power grid shape where projects can go. Large campuses such as Rio AI City at the Barra Olympic Park show how much siting decisions matter locally.

Baigorri’s market-first stance also contrasts with proposals in Congress. A bill on data centres for artificial intelligence, PL 3018/2024, which deals with impacts on the power sector and sustainability, is still before the Senate’s science and technology committee.

What to watch: whether energy and grid rules end up steering data centres more than any telecom planning would, how the Senate handles PL 3018/2024, and whether Anatel takes on a larger role in digital infrastructure beyond telecoms.