That seems to be ICASA's "unofficial" position at the present time. They don't really want anybody using the ISM band at all, since in South Africa it's not an unlicensed band, but is, in some places, almost completely allocated to Telkom and/or Sentech.
Telkom use ISM band radios to relay telephone service to areas where cable theft is frequent, they also seem to have started using the ISM band to operate their own Wi-Fi hot spots.
With the public using the band, Telkom's switch-to-switch wireless relays might pick up interference, on their "licensed" band, which would mean you'll get a huge fine from ICASA and a huge bill from Telkom for "using their frequency."
However, if you are only using a very low power transmitter and are very far from any Telkom equipment, you should be alone on the ISM band in your area. If that is the case, you should be able to get away with using it, provided you stay inside the legal limits for transmission power on unlicensed civilian devices. This means, no amplifiers, no custom antennas, ESPECIALLY not those high-gain and often dangerously high radiation-level Pringles "Cantennas" that so many people like using these days.
According to a source at ICASA, they are only prosecuting people that are advertising Wi-Fi as a service. That means, you may use it inside your home, as you please.
This would mean, you should also be able to use it to connect to others within your neighbourhood, as long as you do not cross any roads. There is one other snag though. You will also need permission from anyone who's property will be traversed by your signals. This means, if neighbour A and C want to connect to each other, but live on opposite sides of neighbour B's house, they will need to ask neighbour B for permission to connect across his property. This was initially intended to limit the laying of cables across property, but is so broadly defined that it covers Wi-Fi connections as well. Neighbour B may even charge rent for your signal passing through his airspace.
On the whole, I would not recommend such a strategy though. ICASA might easily consider it an "advertised, for profit" service, even though you aren't advertising it in the true sence of the word.
The only way you could get away with it is if you carried the entire costs of the ADSL line and provided the access to other users free of charge, or "accidentally," meaning, you set up your wireless access point, but pretend to have no clue how to secure it, so you have no controle over others accessing your network.
If the cost of buying an ADSL line on your own is too high, you might try sharing it with your direct next door neighbour. If each house has a very low power Wi-Fi device to bridge the gap, the signal should reach your neighbour, but it should not be strong enough to attract any attention.
Then simply bill your neighbour for "access to network backup services" once each month. Don't brag about this though, keep it strictly between you and your neighbour. In fact, if your devices support it and you need to have more than one AP to cover the area, try setting the APs up in bridge (WDS) mode and using the same SSID on all APs to make the network appear as a home Wi-Fi network for your own personal use only.
Be warned though, anybody with a Kensington key-chain Wi-Fi finder will easily be able to detect that second AP is not on your property, so make _SURE_ you do not interfere with anybody else's broadcasts, especially Telkom or Sentech, and make sure you use very low power equipment.
Willie Viljoen
Web Developer
Adaptive Web Development
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