slimdude2

Hello, Anyone visiting Rio the first week of December and would like to meet up for a drink/dinner ?

Hoping to help someone... Getting a Brazilian SIM card can be a pain in the ass, especially when reading discordant opinions and experiences in the internet and when you do not own a Brazilian CPF (tax code). 
Internet is very useful, especially in Brazil. Using your home country's number can be really expensive and sometimes data roaming is shitty. And sometimes some services do not work with non Brazilian numbers.
So here's how to do:
1- Buy a Sim card ("chip"), you can do it like everywhere you can find a operator's logo. I bought one from Tim because it's good and for 15 reais per week u get 1.5GB of internet and 100 min of free phone calls to other operators (unlimited towards Tim). 
It will cost you around 10 reais. 
2- Turn off your phone and install the new sim. 
3A- Turn on your phone and wait 5 minutes, if the TIM's system works correctly you will arrive to an interface asking you to confirm your DDD (area code.. For Rio 21, for SP choose 11). After that you will get to know oe your phone number. Take note of it and call *144 after rebooting your device. 
3B- If what I wrote on point 3A doesn't work (my case) your SIM will seem to be just a useless piece of plastic, unregistered on he network which cannot even call TIM support. DO NOT TRASH YOUR SIM. Keep your phone switched on with the SIM installed. In 45 minutes you should receive a SMS with your phone number. Then call *144.
3C- If points 3A or 3B didn't work what you have to do is wait. Every 30 min try to call *144. It will work. Do not worry about your phone number... You will discover it later. 
4- Now that you have made it to call *144, follow the voice. At some point it will say "for English press X" (in my case was 3).
5- You will speak with an English-speaking operator which will register your Sim using your passport number and your address in Brazil (can be the hotel one). And you can ask him about your number, if you still don't know it... Again... You can still find your number later. 
6- The operator will ask you to make an at least 6 seconds phone call (do not worry, your sim already has like 2 reais to make this call)  to a number of tour choice to confirm the  registration, after waiting 2 hours. I just did it immediately after the phone call and it worked. 
7- Congratulations, you have a Brazilian number. All you have to do now is to buy a top up and if you still don't know your number...  send a whatsapp message to yourself or to a friend to discover your number.
You can buy top up everywhere...
If you wanna do it in the internet site of TIM you will need a CPF. So you cannot do that directly with Tim. Just use Ding. It's safe and it does have a very small fee. 
8- Download the TIM app, because it's useful and activate the plan of your choice using it. In my case was TIM pré smart 1,5GB
Remember that your sim will expire after a period of time which depends on the size of the top up you have bought. 
If you let the top up expire, they will freeze your Sim for 2 months. If you don't buy a new top up within this limit, you will lose your number and you will have to start again from point 1.

Thanks for the update.

Thanks for the update.