[OT] South african laws - was [Asterisk-Users] iax2 jitter buffer help

[Stephen Davies]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Chris Lee wrote:

> On the subject of South Africa
> What are the laws regarding using the Internet to carry telephone traffic?
> What are the laws regarding connecting digium kit to Telkom equipment?
> As I recall they are quite restrictive, have they been eased up a bit?

The law is still very restrictive.

Equipment should be ICASA approved for connection to the
network.  Digium equipment isn't.

VOIP may be used on private networks.  However such use is for
office-to-office calls, and may not be used to bypass Telkom.  This is
generally understood to mean connecting in from the PSTN and then
breaking back out again.  Even VOIP on private networks is supposed to
be dependent on getting a private telecommunications licence.

In SA a "private network" means a network built out of Telkom data
circuits.  No actual "private" commmunications links are allowed.  
VPN-type networks are not included.

Value Added network providers - including ISPs and suchlike are not
supposed to allow the use of their service for transporting VOIP, and
certainly may not market services like that.  Of course they don't
know and I'd guess they don't ask.

Technically I guess using services like Vonage or whatever from SA is
questionable too.

Of course South African's have developed a certain attitude to the
law, and enforcement is difficult, especially for small-scale private
use.  For example type-approval of equipment seems to be pretty much
overlooked - see no evil, hear no evil.

I'm no lawyer and perhaps Telkom/ICASA/Dept of Communications'
interpretations of the law are wrong - I don't think they've really
been tested in the courts.  I also may have got some of the subtleties
slightly wrong.

You might ask why a country which could benefit so much from
communication innovation has such restrictive law.  It's a sad story
of money, power and influence.

You can read an interesting article on the SAT3 undersea cable and
communications in Africa at:

  http://www.myadsl.co.za/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1635

Regards,
Steve Davies

PS: 512k down / 256k up ADSL, capped at 3GB total inbound+outbound
traffic, brutal traffic shaping which (coincidentally?) often breaks
VOIP: +/- US$120 per month to you, sir.