Argentina's telecommunications regulator is handing device certification to the private sector — and, in the process, has surfaced a gap that regulators worldwide keep tripping over: what happens when the liability question moves online but the rulebook doesn't follow.
A Genuinely Sensible Modernization
The strongest case for ENACOM Resolution 57/2026, published in the Boletín Oficial on February 26, 2026, is straightforward: Argentina's state homologation regime for phones, routers, and other telecom equipment has run for roughly four decades, built for a market of a handful of importers, not a marketplace economy processing millions of SKUs. Centralized government review of every device model is slow by design, and that friction is a real cost — delayed market entry, higher prices, and an incentive for informal imports that bypass certification altogether. Resolution 57/2026 replaces that chokepoint with accredited private Certification Agencies, registered with ENACOM and audited under ISO/IEC 17065 standards via Argentina's national accreditation body, that issue Certificates of Conformity based on lab testing. It also introduces "product family" registration so similar models can clear together, and drops the old three-year renewal cycle in favor of continuous surveillance. This is the same third-party-conformity-assessment model the U.S. (FCC-recognized Telecommunication Certification Bodies) and the EU (CE self-declaration plus Notified Bodies) have used for years. Argentina catching up is unambiguously good for consumers who want new devices faster and cheaper.
The Part the Resolution Doesn't Answer
The regime takes effect September 1, 2026, when the new RAMATEL (Registro de Actividades y Materiales de Telecomunicaciones) regulation formally supersedes the old rules; existing registrations keep validity for three years before holders must re-file under the new framework. Buried in that same regulation is Article 10, which requires that telecom equipment sold through web portals display its RAMATEL registration number on the listing — a rule aimed squarely at e-commerce, and one that explicitly names "titulares de portales o sitios web que sirvan de intermediarios" (marketplace operators, not just direct sellers) as subject to the obligation.
What the resolution does not do is say what happens when that number is wrong. As El Diario 24 reported on July 19, 2026, with the deadline under two months away, responsibility for sellers who post incorrect registration numbers remains undefined — there is no stated rule for who bears liability when a third-party seller on a marketplace fakes a number, copies one from an unrelated model, or never registers the device at all. Argentina's general consumer protection statute (Law 24.240) and its commercial fair-trading law (Law 22.802) would presumably apply as a backstop, but neither was written with algorithmic marketplace listings in mind, and ENACOM has not issued guidance on how the two regimes interact with the new certification duty.
A Parallel Fight Over the Same Resolution
The liability gap isn't the only unresolved thread. The professional engineers' association COPITEC has filed suit against ENACOM seeking to nullify Resolution 57/2026 and suspend it before the September deadline, arguing the agency's current intervención (a temporary administrative status ENACOM has operated under for more than three years) lacked authority to enact what COPITEC calls a structural overhaul of a decades-old licensing system, and objecting specifically to the resolution's elimination of the mandatory licensed technical representative. No court has granted the injunction, and the September 1 timeline stands as of this writing — but the challenge underscores that ENACOM pushed a significant regulatory shift through with limited external consultation, the same posture that left the marketplace-liability question unaddressed.
The Right Fix Is Narrow, Not Reflexive
The instinct in Brussels or Delhi facing a similar gap would likely be to impose broad due-diligence duties on marketplaces — verify every listing, or face fines. That would be the wrong lesson here. Most marketplace sellers publishing RAMATEL numbers will be accurately relaying what a legitimate Certification Agency issued them; the failure mode is a minority of bad actors, and a blanket verification mandate would tax every platform to catch a few. The better fix is one product-liability law already knows: a notice-and-correction duty, where marketplaces must remove or flag a listing once ENACOM or a rights holder flags a mismatched registration number, paired with direct seller liability for the false claim itself — not open-ended platform liability for every fraudulent number a third party posts.
ENACOM has five weeks before September 1 to write that rule into implementing guidance rather than let it emerge from the first enforcement dispute or the COPITEC litigation. A modernization this sound shouldn't be remembered for the liability question it left on the table.