Regulatory Fees on the 802.11 Broadcast Spectrum?

Demerara asks: "I live in the Caribbean where I am putting together a business plan for a WISP on St. Lucia. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the St. Lucian National Telecomms Regulatory Commission here licenses and charges fees for 2.4Ghz spread spectrum applications. It's nearly US$400 to apply and, get this, nearly US$800 per link, per *year*. This blows the economics of a WISP out of the water. I may be reading the laws and regulations wrong but I don't think so. For example - they even charge an application fee and an annual license for the 'Family Band' walkie-talkies - look in the fees PDF. I am attempting to find out the following: what international agreements govern spectrum management; what international agreements govern licensing of WiFi or 802.11; and finally, are there any Slashdot readers out there who live in countries where 802.11 technology is also licensed or heavily regulated? The ITU website doesn't seem to answer these questions or, to be fair, I cannot come up with the keywords to find the answers. I'd love to hear from others who use or operate 802.11 under less than 'free' regulatory regimes."

Comments

Re:France?

[Hognoxious]

Do you realize how petty, narrow-minded and "Little American" you sound? You've probably never even left the USA... which is a good thing for the rest of the world.

Bashing the French is by no means a recent American invention; the English have been doing it for hundreds of years.

Of course that won't stop some herbert filing a patent for "... a method of deriding a nation of smelly, snail eating simians by making repeated references to their miltary ineptitude".

Re:France?

[Hognoxious]

Better yet: "con".
Great French Victories