[Discuss] Do your country's Telco Regs help or hinder community networks?

[Michael Bauer]

Hi Dan,

Hello to melbourne first. 

> I'm Dan Flett, I'm the President of Melbourne Wireless, a community wireless
> group in Australia. Like most of you, we aim to create a non-profit
> city-wide network. I'm guessing almost all of you are creating your network
> to distribute Internet access to your members and/or the general community.

Actually we define our project as creating alternative autonomous network
infrastructure. Internet access is just a nice collateral product. 

> Broadband is a fairly scarce resource here, and it isn't nearly as cheap or
> as fast here as in other parts of the world. To provide a reasonable level
> of Internet access to our network, we would need to cover our costs. In
> order to receive payment in return for internet access in Australia, you
> need to have a Carrier Licence. And if you have a Carrier Licence or operate
> any sort of ISP you are subject to all sorts of regulations, including the
> requirement to provide wiretap access to your network to law enforcement.

Actually if you are an ISP in Austria the same applies. We don't take money
from the people using the network so we don't classify as an ISP which
saves us a lot of hassle. This is what i would suggest you to do. So how to
pay the running costs of uplink and servers etc. This is in huge discussion
here to. We are in the lucky situation to get most of our bandwith donated.
This assures internet connection so far. Other networks (as freifunk in
Germany) started with people sharing their own private broadband access
with others . That means a few people have broadband access and serve the
rest of the people. This works ok if you do not that much rely on speed and
do not want to use public ip adresses. I would suggest you to start like
that, it will save you all this legal issues of beeing a telco etc.

Go for it without taking money first, just do it.

greetings from Vienna Mihi

-- 
Nature has no stake in being understood by scientists. 
			Michael J. Crawley in ISBN 0-470-02298-1