A 45-year-old state monopoly gives way to private certification
On February 26, 2026, Argentina's telecom regulator ENACOM published Resolución 57/2026 in the Boletín Oficial, retiring the homologation regime that had governed phones, routers, and other radio-frequency equipment since Resolución SC 729/80. In its place: a system where accredited private certification agencies, not ENACOM engineers, issue the Conformity Certificates that let a device enter the Argentine market. The resolution also creates RAMATEL — the Registro de Actividades y Materiales de Telecomunicaciones — as the single database of record for who is authorized to sell what.
The policy logic is sound and, on balance, welcome. Infobae reported that Secretary of Innovation Darío Genua framed the change around a simple idea: if a device already meets internationally recognized standards, Argentina shouldn't force a redundant, multi-month domestic re-test. Registrations no longer expire on a fixed three-year clock, technically identical commercial variants no longer need separate filings, and devices certified abroad can lean on that work. For a country that has chronically lagged global device launch cycles, faster market entry means more choice and lower prices for consumers — a legitimate, evidence-based deregulatory win.
The marketplace mandate — and the gap next to it
The part of the resolution now drawing scrutiny, with the September 1, 2026 compliance deadline weeks away, is Article 10. It requires that telecommunications equipment sold through web portals display the assigned RAMATEL registration number in the listing itself — and explicitly extends that duty to "titulares de portales o sitios web que sirvan de intermediarios," not just the seller. In other words, Mercado Libre and Argentina's other big marketplaces are now co-obligated, alongside every phone-case-and-router vendor on their platforms, to surface a specific regulatory number on every relevant listing.
What the text does not do is say what happens when that number is wrong. As reporting ahead of the transition noted, the question of what responsibility falls on marketplaces when a third-party seller enters an incorrect or fabricated registration number "is something that still is not defined." ENACOM's own text imposes the display obligation on platforms but is silent on the liability consequences of a seller's error — leaving the exposure of intermediaries, if any, to be worked out later, most likely through enforcement discretion or litigation rather than clear rulemaking.
Steelmanning the case for platform accountability
There's a real argument for holding marketplaces to some standard here. RAMATEL exists because radio-emitting devices can cause real harms — spectrum interference, safety failures in uncertified batteries and chargers, counterfeit goods that misrepresent their compliance. Marketplaces are also the cheapest-cost avoiders: Mercado Libre and its peers already run seller-verification and content-moderation pipelines, and ENACOM's registry is public and, in principle, machine-queryable, so cross-checking a submitted RAMATEL number against the database is a solvable engineering problem, not a novel one. Consumer-protection statutes like Ley 24.240 already contemplate that platforms bear some duty of care toward listings on their own sites. A regulator saying "if you're going to gate commerce on a number, you should verify it" is not an unreasonable ask.
Why strict liability would undercut the reform's own goals
But importing strict liability — treating the marketplace as if it certified the device itself whenever a seller's number turns out to be fake — would cut against everything else in Resolución 57/2026. The whole point of the reform, per Genua's own framing, is to widen the pool of sellers and devices reaching Argentine consumers faster and cheaper. If platforms face open-ended exposure for third-party data entry errors they cannot fully audit at listing volume, the rational response is to over-block: mass-delist small importers and marginal categories (IoT sensors, aftermarket routers, the long tail Resolución 57/2026 was explicitly designed to admit) rather than risk downstream liability none of them can price. That is precisely the innovation-chilling failure mode proportionate regulation is supposed to avoid, and it would fall hardest on the small sellers the deregulation was meant to help.
A workable middle path exists — ENACOM should write it down
The fix isn't complicated, and other liability regimes have already road-tested versions of it: a notice-and-verify duty, not strict liability. Require marketplaces to check submitted RAMATEL numbers against ENACOM's registry at listing time — a check the agency can enable via API — and to remove or flag listings promptly once notified of a mismatch. Shield platforms from liability for a seller's fraudulent number if they ran that check in good faith and acted on notice; expose them only where they knew or were told and did nothing. That standard protects consumers from the interference and safety harms RAMATEL exists to prevent without making marketplaces insurers of every seller's paperwork. With Copitec's own legal challenge to the broader resolution already before a court, and September 1 arriving regardless, ENACOM has a narrow window to close this gap by guidance rather than by whatever ad hoc standard the first enforcement action or lawsuit happens to produce.