[wsfii-discuss] The Empire Strikes Back: South Africa

Wed Feb 18 11:12:44 UTC 2009

Hi Vicram,

whom can we address for an international petition? How else could we support this issue from abroad?

Thx

JuergeN

> -----Original Message-----
> From: v1clist at yahoo.co.uk 
> [mailto:wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of 
> Vickram Crishna
> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 8:05 AM
> To: wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org; Open Hardware
> Subject: [wsfii-discuss] The Empire Strikes Back: South Africa
> 
> Tragically, yesterday the South African regulatory agency 
> ICASA confiscated (without warrant or notice) equipment being 
> used by the Mesh Potato project in its Village Telco 
> implementation. The excuse (given verbally on the telephone) 
> was illegal use of wireless equipment, against which the 
> local telco (named Telkom) had filed a complaint on grounds 
> of wireless interference. 
> 
> It appears from discussions on the Village Telco list (at 
> Googlegroups) that the ISM band in South Africa is still not 
> free-to-use, and also that licensed wireless networks (but 
> not WISPs) must not allow their signals to cross roads (al la 
> Canute?). However, in this case, Village Telco evidently has 
> the requisite WISP license, so one must view the situation 
> with some gloom. 
> 
> Apologies for cross-posting: I know (through a recent round 
> of introductions) that many of our listmembers are already on 
> the Village Telco list. 
> 
>  Vickram
> http://communicall.wordpress.com
> http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com
> 
> 
> 
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> 