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

Wed Feb 18 12:22:25 UTC 2009

We didn't reach (yet) the point of a direct confrontation with the
regulatory agiencies, but also facing difficulties while trying to gain
space and momentum. Sometimes looks like there is some hidden interests
which don't like very much a sustainable business model where the users
building their own infrastructures.

I don't have very much information on the mess potato project/village
telco case, but IMHO and inline with Juergen comments, I think that makes
sense to find out how to cooperate internationally and build a general
understanding that the main concern of the countries and regulatory
agencies needs to be the development of the information society instead of
protecting the status quo of a few corporate interests.

Ramon.

>
> 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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>>
>>
>
>
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