[Ninux-day] A law question

[Ramon Roca]

Good point Mitar,

That's also what I've working this holidays and still, in our case urged 
because of the fiber optic deployments ongoing, instead of interop... :(
Yes, I assume that has to be many similarities in all the UE states 
because of the EU framework.
Thats a very good point to be considered while running the network: i.e. 
in order to be granted for access to public domains, such as streets 
etc, you must run a public network, and therefore meet the requirements 
for that, and in our case is not optional, we have to unless we do 
resign of new generation networks.
Although I assume that every community network has the aim of being 
public, legally if that network isn't formally public, is a "private" 
network of those who are enjoying it.

Might be differences between states regarding to this, how do you 
register, fees/taxes etc. I.e. in spain the registration is free and 
then you pay a tax according to your business, similar to VAT, and since 
we don't charge fees to the participants in our network, we don't pay 
anithing ;). If in Slovenia you pay a fee, that might be a problem 
depending on the amount and needs to be reasonable/proportional, because 
don't have to be something which blocks new players into competition.

About the other obligation,retain information, etc, also you might have 
to look into detail. Do it relaxed, there is a lot of paranoia on that. 
Those requirements should be also reasonable, to give you an example 
about the information, don't think that we have to store all the 
traffic, they ask just for ip addresses leases for a certain amount of 
time, something which for us right now is quite easy to meet: We still 
do provide static addresses, we do even do publish much more information 
than any other comercial operator does...

Also, in order be a considered as a public, thre has to be no doubt that 
we do provide connectivity services to the public, i.e. not to just our 
friends, and describe how is managed etc, so the "Commons" here becomes 
a key piece on that, and those days we were very busy reworking on that, 
we have now an almost finished a much more detailed revision (but still 
the same), by now only in Catalan.

In short, formally, everyone have to choose between become public or 
not. If you don't go public, is private regardless if you feel the 
opposite...

Again, for us there is no choice: We have to become public, if not we 
might be blocked to deploy NgN, access to the interchange, etc... I 
understand that might be other point of views on that, i.e. in Slovenia 
if you already have a good FTTH, don't know, maybe is not a priority for 
you now, in my opinion if we want to grow as an alternative and develop 
new, alternative, fair, sustainable and user friendly networks to keep 
the network neutrality etc, there is no doubt that community networks 
must be also public networks at all effects.


Ramon.

Al 10/01/10 07:35, En/na Mitar ha escrit:
> Hi!
>
> I have been reading Slovenian law on telecommunications during holidays
> and found that they do not differ between different kinds of
> telecommunication networks. So they have only one kind of "public
> telecommunication network" and if you are doing it (what is everything
> public which uses telecommunications) you have to register, pay yearly
> fee just to be registered, retain traffic data...
>
> Unofficially they said that of course open WiFi networks (like if you
> have your home router open) are not public telecommunication network. So
> it is just a good faith. And if our network grows too big...
>
> But they are also saying that there are completely in sync with EU laws.
> So I am asking if anybody could tell me if there are differences between
> different "public telecommunication networks" in EU law? Like if you
> have your WiFi open, do you immediately become a provider of a "public
> telecommunication network"? If yes, this means that everybody with
> unconfigured WiFi router is in conflict with law because it does not
> register this network? If not, why not? What is the provision which
> differs? I thought it would be commercial nature or something. But in
> our law it is simply nothing.
>
>
> Mitar
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