In the last few days, most sports betting and online gaming platforms have faced some kind of connection problem in Rio de Janeiro and even in the rest of the country, following the TRF1's decision to order the National Telecommunications Agency - Anatel to ask telephone and internet operators to block betting platforms operating in Rio de Janeiro without a licence from the Rio de Janeiro State Lottery - LOTERJ.

On the day of Anatel's notification to telephone and internet providers, concerns were raised about the technical difficulties for operators in blocking sites (domains/sites/DNS, IPs, URLs, and ASNs) exclusively in Rio de Janeiro. This is due to the high degree of complexity and the risk of side effects potentially impacting the entire country. Some providers, including AT&T Global Network Services Brazil and Claro, have officially commented on the process.

Some cases, such as the problems faced by users of the Oi operator in Paraná and the Centre West, may have been due to technical problems, but users of betting platforms in various states of the country have faced connection problems in the last 48 hours.

With specific regard to Rio de Janeiro, the operator VIVO blocked access in the state to mobile data from mobile phones and the fibre optic connection, but maintained the Wi-Fi service after 24 hours of notification. As of this week, Claro, TIM and Oi's operations began blocking access to online betting and gaming platforms from the URL addresses reported in the action by LOTERJ.

In order to block the domain name (example: siteilegal.com.br), the provider must register the blocked domain in its ‘Recursive DNS Server’, which is the DNS (Domain Name System) server used by the Internet provider's clients to browse.

As it happens, the platforms anticipated this and informed their clients registered in Rio de Janeiro of an alternative address, so all residents of the state were able to continue betting on their favourite platforms.

In fact, the blockade in the state of Rio de Janeiro only affected the attraction of new customers.

Mobile operators' market share

A local study details the Market Share of mobile telephony, the number of mobile phones owned by mobile operators in Brazil by Federation Unit.

In May, Vivo had a 38.6% share of the national market, followed by Claro with 33.9%, TIM with 23.7% and Oi with 16.5%. In Rio de Janeiro, Claro leads with 37.4% (8,135,067 handsets), followed by Vivo with 34.7% (7,552,755) and TIM with 25.6% (5,575,118).