[wsfii-discuss] Pre-alert situation in Argentina, please help & advice

Sun Nov 25 17:12:16 UTC 2012

hola ramon, hola nicolas, is there any translation of this message to
spanish done already? i could help posting it on a couple of other places
and have more people aware, sounds like a delicate situation there hope
they can inform better the "regulators" about what the project is about and
the consumer grade appliances in use.
thanks for the heads--up anyhow, we just revamped -medellinwireless- with
the great mesh-potato hardware... still far from the fiber optic you guys
at guifi net have already achieved. :)
/a

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Ramon Roca <ramon.roca at guifi.net> wrote:

>
> Sorry for cross-posting, and in English for a wider audience.
>
> Last friday, colleagues from a community wireless which is cooperating
> with us in a small village in Argentina got a visit from representatives of
> the CNC (Comisión Nacional de las Comunicaciones). Seems that the
> inspection was caused by a claim from Telecom, a local mobile operator
> affiliated to Movistar (Telefonica), arguing that was interfering to their
> backbone links.
>
> The inspected nodes are actually composed by low cost wifi routers,
> working al 2.4 band, using the Argentinian regulatory domain, which is
> region 2 of the UIT (same as in the US), with a power between 50mW and
> 100mW and serving Internet to a primary school, and some families in a
> low-income neighborhood.
>
> Our colleagues are very much concerned because of the lack of regulations
> in Argentina. Looks like those CNC officials will come back next Thursday
> asking for shutting down the nodes, or even confiscation of the equipment.
> Although wifi equipment has been widely extended in Argentina, the concern
> is that looks like there are some old regulations which require
> discretionary legalization for any radio equipment, and CNC can invoke
> those regulations for this purpose.
>
> That's why IMHO we are facing a pre-alert situation in Argentina that
> requires to stay tuned on how evolves.
>
> My first impression is that this kind of equipment and and this band is
> very unlikely the cause for any disturbance for mobile operators, therefore
> my first advice to them has been to cooperate with the authorities for any
> technical assessments on site related to the spectrum analysis, with the
> hope that the story will finish here.
>
> But in the meantime and just in case:
>
>    1. Please stay tuned in what happens next Thursday. In case of the
>    network being forced for shutdown or being confiscated, we plan to release
>    a press note reporting those facts, which we believe that might be a
>    serious injury of fundamental rights from citizens from governments and
>    large-corporations, so we will ask for you cooperation disseminating though
>    blogs and social networks worldwide.
>     2. Does anybody know from a local legal contact from Argentina who
>    may assist this wireless community? If someone has a contact, please let me
>    know.
>     3. Any other advice/idea?
>
> Thanks,
> Ramon.
>
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