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

Wed Feb 18 14:08:44 UTC 2009

We dont know where this is really going.

Obviously there is a status quo and many of the companies and 
organizations that some of us in this network have tried to work with 
over the years are part of that.

Its possible that there is a limit to what amount of change can be put 
forward in a society and that maybe to some that threshold is being passed.

Yet government regulatory agencies have always been threatened by the 
kinds of things we have talked about here and some corporations as well 
and we have seen that real innovation is possible.

The key is to provide opportunities for corporations to get involved 
constructively in the process of this innovation because we could not do 
such efforts completely at the grassroots anyhow - at least not yet.

Jeff

ramon.roca at guifi.net wrote:
> 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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>>     
>
>
>
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