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

Wed Feb 18 16:11:52 UTC 2009

Vickram Crishna wrote:
> 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.

Was there interference? If so then I would complain as well. As much as 
this is being made out to be a little guy vs big guy story, if someone 
was interfering with a (licensed frequency) community WiFI network, 
wouldn't you want the law to be enforced?

> 
> 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.

I think we need some more data on this. If they did have a license, AND 
were interfering (a (slim) possibility, but we can't know for sure 
without more data) then there may be a case for seizure.

(And before you all jump down my throat, realize that I am one of the 
strongest proponents of wireless community networks you'll find, see 
socalwifi.net for example).

-- 
Charles N Wyble charles at thewybles.com
(818)280-7059 http://charlesnw.blogspot.com
CTO SocalWiFI.net