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

Some Countries are unclear on the concept.

[BigFire]

When ever they see even a way of squeezing a buck out of whatever you do, they'll go for it. This has the effect of driving business from even visiting the place in the first place.

Well, one of the benefit of sovereignity is the ability to print your own money, hope someone else is dumb enough to actually take it.

Re:France?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, when the restrictions were challenged, they surrendered.

What you have to realize,

[mindstrm]

especially in small countries, is that the government can and do control everything. They can regulate spectrum how they want, and USE how they want.

Some places even say "You can't use 2.4Ghz for internet" or "providing internet in any way is forbidden unless you are the national ISP" .. etc....

So you might be screwed.

The upside, is you can bribe.

Re:What you have to realize,

[autopr0n]

especially in small countries, is that the government can and do control everything. They can regulate spectrum how they want, and USE how they want.

Heh, it's not like that isn't the case here. After all, all of this came about because someone at the FCC though "Hey, lets take this 2.4 ghz band and let people use it for stuff like garage door openers and cordless phones! (and whatever else they can think up)" It would be just as illegal here to try to setup wifi on the 2.2 ghz band or the 2.5 as it is for him to to use 2.4 over there without paying.

as far as I know, there are no treates dealing with signal use. In fact, one of the things Clear Channel does is broadcast from mexico so that they can circumvent limits on how many radio stations they own.

Anyway, asside from a few windows, all radio spectrum is regulated in the US. Wifi was created to work in those windows, not the other way around. It would be sensible for other countries to have the same windows, but not you can't act like america is better if they don't.

Other options

[theglassishalf]

Well...you are about 25 miles south of Martinique. What are their laws? You could just boost the power and point your antennas due south a la Wolfman Jack... (during the 60s, he broadcast his radio show at "4 times the legal limit" from 4 towers just south of the Mexican border, pointed due north.)

-Daniel

Re:France?

[melonman]

It's getting better, just.

There are still very strict limits on signal strength in normal circumstances outside buildings. But the regulatory body started to grant 'exceptional' licences last October, mainly in rural areas where France Telecom refuse to install terrestial broadband (FT replaced MS as the company I most like to hate some time ago...)

As with anything else in France, you have to produce an enormous dossier, a large part of which involves showing that your installation won't crash any jets at the local air base, as wifi uses a French military frequency. You would have thought that the military would shift, but there you are.

Last time I looked (a couple of weeks ago) I think 20 or so licences had been awarded across the country.

What's next?

[Mshift2x]

I wonder when we'll have to pay licensing fees for our microwaves, since you know, they do emit microwaves at some frequency

Could be worse, could be Trinidad

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider yourself lucky that the government still owns and collects on 802.11 frequencies. In Trinidad, they sold those rights away to a private company which is even more vehement in putting obsticales in the way of using wifi. Public commons should not be privately owned, and this is more true in spectrum than anywhere else.

Re:France?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Thus if anyone goes to war with France, crippling their military communications will be even easier than previously expected.

Protection of Govenment Sponsored Monopolies

[bladernr]

If you look deeper, you may discover that the govenment is protecting an [in-efficient] monopoly.

For instance, many countries disallow consumer VoIP usage (India, for instance, last time I checked). The reason is that their big, government controlled international phone carrier (BSNL) makes most of its profit from international calls. Government enterprises are protected by the government through a system of regulations, leading generally to higher prices and lower service all around.

Maybe the government is protecting a government ISP or wireless provider. Yes, it could be mobile phone protection; many government regulators don't notice a different between GSM, 3G and 802.11b/g.

To get around the licensing, you may can convince/bribe some government minister that you won't be competing with the protected enterprise. Otherwise, maybe you can take your case to the public and hope for a rules change. No matter what, changing protectionist regulations is a nightmare. Just ask Europe how easy it would be to get France to consider dropping the CAP and going for free-market food-production.

I grew up in Jamaica and

[Brigadier]

there are quite a few laws governing any sort of braodcast, but there is no one to police it. and If you did get cought a US $50 would paysomeone off. I know this sounds bad but it's true. Most third world contries dont have the ifrastructure to manage stuff like this. So why do they make such laws to gouge anyone who tries to do something that woudl better the community.

Your business is in the government's best interest

[Rimbo]

What your business doing represents a win-win scenario for the government of St. Lucia. Show the government how your business will make their jobs and lives easier and better. They may even become one of your better investors. I am sure you will be able to work a way around this regulatory snag, or have it deregulated.

Bullshit question

[maggard]

Most nations consider their telecommunications spectrum to a natural national resource the same as public lands, airspace, coasts, mining, etc. Indeed at one time the US licensed on the basis that "aether" was a physical medium.

You're proposing a business built on using the publics property - their radio frequencies. Why shouldn't they expect to get back return on their property?

In many countries operators are required to give back in return via community-interest programming, being requisitioned in times of emergency, providing other services. Different countries prefer a straight licensing fee: Pay to use the medium or get shut down. Most use some combination as does the USA.

However your asking on /. for an interpretation of St. Lucia law is absolutely ludicrous. Pay for competent local legal advice and don't go asking the geeks for what most of them know little about: International telecommunications law and specifically St. Lucia law.

Why does /. post these garbage questions every so often anyhow? Raise pageviews? It's gotta be obvious few if any of the readers here will have the requisite knowledge, hell half are probably unaware there is non-US law anywhere.

Someone has to pay!

[k12linux]

Quit whining about paying for wireless spectrum. After all, someone has to produce that spectrum. You can't just expect the government or private industry to make spectrum all day long and then give it away.

Spectrum is hard to make. I mean, look how long it took to perfect 2.4Ghz spectrum and produce enough to support WiFi. All those R&D costs have to be paid by someone! I'm not even counting the investment needed to build a spectrum manufacturing plant.

The US government is able to give it away for free only because of payments from WiFi manufacturers. The WiFi group shrewdly knew that the market would open wide if there was free 2.4Ghz radio spectrum. ;-)

There ARE treaties...

[n1ywb]

There ARE international treaties on spectrum utilization. Except that they tend to take a extremely broad view, and only recognize a few specific services, such as shortwave broadcasting, amateur radio, radar, radio astronomy, etc. The vast majority of frequency allocations are designated for certain general types of use and the implementation is left entirely up to the national governments.

In Great Britain you have to buy a license to legally RECIEVE television channels (may no longer be true).

There are no "windows" of unregulated frequencies in the US. The FCC regulates everything from 30KHz to 300GHz. Some bands are free-er than others, but they are all regulated and all devices which emit radio frequency energy must meet FCC regulations.

It's pretty common for broadcasters to transmit from neighboring countries. The US does it on a global scale, poinding The Voice Of America into evil commie pinko countries all over the world. Just as their are companies transmitting from Mexico into the US, there are also a lot of companies transmitting from the US into Canada. International law DOES specify that signals are only subject to the regulations of the country they originate in. For example, France can't extradite you for transmitting a pro-Nazi tyrade from a US based shortwave station. Fuck Nazi's by the way, it's just the only example I could think of.

International treaties take much less notice of the higher bands, since the only way signals at those frequencies will cross many borders is via satellites. This is a problem for countries like the Canada, that basicly ends up having to copy most of the US's band-plans.

Thankfully, with few exceptions, my ham radio frequencies are protected on a global basis. Now if we could just get those god damn short wave stations off 40 meters...