STF Orders Anatel to Explain Failures in Zero‑Rated Access to Electoral Sites

Overview

• STF minister Cristiano Zanin gave Anatel 48 hours on Wednesday to explain why free access to Justice Electoral services failed during the first round and set October 22 as the deadline for corrections.
• Anatel’s October 1–5 monitoring ran about 3,597 daily tests across all 27 units and found operator success rates near 89% for Claro and TIM, 91% for Vivo and 95% for Surf while reporting that roughly one in ten tests failed in some provider‑state combinations.
• The agency reported repeated failures in gov.br authentication and spotty access to key electoral apps — e‑Título, Pardal and Boletim na Mão — with problems concentrated in places including Minas Gerais and Pará.
• Zanin also ordered the TSE to supply, within 48 hours, the definitive list of domains, servers and authentication portals required by the apps and told Anatel to notify the STF within 24 hours of any widespread outage during the Oct 22–26 second‑round monitoring window.
• The order rests on a lawsuit by the Partido Verde and uses Anatel’s supervisory power under Law No. 9.472/1997 to compel operators that cover about 98% of the mobile market to test and reconfigure zero‑rating so voters who lack data can find polling info and official fact checks.