Amos, you will find our website to be a goldmine of information about license exempt radio regulations around the world:
http://www.openspectrum.info/ You have an especially interesting situation in your country because the 1992 constitution says "there shall be no law requiring any person to obtain a license as a prerequisite to the establishment or operation of a newspaper, journal Or OTHER MEDIA FOR MASS COMMUNICATION OR INFORMATION..." (emphasis added) (Chapter 12, article 162 Sect. 3) A supreme court case in 1996 found that your government does have the right to license radio, but only to maintain technical order in the spectrum. That gives an unusually strong legal base for arguing for license exemption whenever the risk of interference is low. Despite that, Ghana is one of the few countries that licenses WiFi and charges exorbitant fees for spectrum use - but I don't know how strictly they enforce their rules. See the "Ghana" page on our website. >From this distance, it looks like one could reasonably argue that Ghana's WiFi policy is unconstitutional. If you want to explore that option further, or if you know someone else there who might want to create a test case, contact me. >BOB< Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:45:29 +0000 From: "Amos Anyimadu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [DDN] Regulation and Wifi, Regulation and Internet Telephony To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" I am doing a paper on the use of license-exempt radio spectrum - principally for wifi and wimax in Ghana. I am looking at it principally from the policy and regulatory perspectives, in particular, how can regulation enhance the development of Wifi and Wimax in Ghana? For the moment, I am looking directly at Accra's "wireless jungle" but I am also interested in the potential of these technologies for rural telematics and addressing local digital divides. I would be most grateful for all pointers and comparative examples... Amos Anyimadu Technology Assessment Project University of Ghana -- Amos Anyimadu [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Robert Horvitz Stichting Open Spectrum Slavikova 11, 120 00 Prague 2, Czech Republic Gelderlandplein 75 L, 1082 LV Amsterdam, Nederland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.openspectrum.info/ mob: +420 775024705 tel: +420 222726807 fax: +420 222725688 _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
