Brazilian telecom regulator Anatel announced appointments to its new organizational structure earlier in June, signaling yet another step in its quest for restructuring.  The Brazilian national telecom agency decide to reshuffle its deck following a process rather than service based organization.  This means no special treatment of public versus private services under the new regime, in contrast to the modus operandi of the old system, which was geared towards protecting the wireline voice services.  This would tend to indicate a much lighter approach to regulation, enabling mergers that can form full-service national competitors.  The real competition would then be among these nationwide new organizations - with companies such as Telesp, Brasil Telecom and Embratel expected to take advantage of the change in rules.

On a separate note, Anatel is also trying to hold its 3G license auction as quickly as possible (perhaps even this year).  Despite some skepticism, I do believe that Brazil would be able to attract a new entrant (like Hutchinson or Vodafone).