Talk:Brazil/@comment-201.69.248.71-20160321001414/@comment-24682153-20160321015247

Yes, today I think it does not matter anymore.

In fact few people (most with Portuguese language skills) actually could get hold of a SIM before 2012. Hereis a reflection of this. But it was not entirely impossible. The stores just said não. I'm just back from Brazil and I can really imagine this, because of their service mentality. The either didn't know or didn't want to know. The ministry of communication said in 2012:'' "Atualmente, muitas empresas ainda exigem um número de CPF (documento emitido pela Receita Federal do Brasil) no momento da compra, o que dificulta a aquisição dos chips pelos turistas e mesmo estrangeiros com residência no país." ''They especially issued a decree to make the shops aware of the existing rules:Turistas estrangeiros poderão comprar chips de celular apresentando passaporte.

Nowadays, it's much easier, but still tricky without language skills. You can forget the newspaper kiosks that sell chips, because you hardly can do the activation over the phone, but in operator's stores in touristy areas, you can be pretty sure of getting some prepaid plan.

The real challenge is to get the TIM Visitor plan, that no local Brazilian can get. As I you can read from my experience below, it's possible - but for others it took a couple of TIM stores (see further below). That's like the CPF was once ago...