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WISP's: Dishes/Grids (CPE's) & Estates
- Thread starter breacher
- Start date
Napalm2880
Expert Member
I'm in a free standing house with a homeowners association. The managing agents had an issue with the 3m to 6m pole that the WISP's antenna had to be mounted on to get reception in our area - which I guess was understandable.
I could have probably ignored the Homeowners and installed it anyway - seeing as it's a free standing unit and not sectional title but instead I opted for ADSL as Telkom suddenly changed its mind and decided to replace the copper which was stolen down our road.
I could have probably ignored the Homeowners and installed it anyway - seeing as it's a free standing unit and not sectional title but instead I opted for ADSL as Telkom suddenly changed its mind and decided to replace the copper which was stolen down our road.
Thanks for your reply.
That I do understand - this however is a small dish mounted below the roof. The DSTV dish is more visible on the house and from street view.
koeksGHT
Dealer
People will always have issues, South Africans are the best at it.
There is no logical reason as most wifi equipment is smaller than a DSTV dish.
Not a clue on estate law if residents could even take them to court about it.
also in a free standing house with a homeowners association, when i got gatvol of Telkoms excuses i put up a 2 foot dish on a 3m pole, and smaller CPE's further down the pole to create a little WUG with the other homeowners.
And the HOA was okay with it?
As for the legality of it, we will be finding out shortly...
This is what we have found in the years that we have been involved in this industry.
Some HOA's are simply petty. We've had situations where an HOA fined a client R300 per day for installing a 2.4GHz Ubiquiti Nanostation on his wall without permission. We ended up hiding it in his ceiling.
Never underestimate the fear of the radio waves. I kid you not. We've had HOA's tell us that the radiation from the antennas causes headaches. "You would not allow a cellphone base station on the side of your house. So why do you want an internet base station? The radio waves will fry your brain." Seriously.
Then there's the "Daar is nie pille vir stupid nie", where somebody ignored the 3M box with the two ST connectors on the wall of his flat, with the associated range of ftth services (up to 100Mb), and installed a Mikrotik Groove on his roof so he can get his 2Mb uncapped from one of our competitors - without the permission of the HOA. They paid for every apartment to get ftth. They also paid for a reticulated TV system so there are only two satellite dishes in the complex. Their reasoning was that they didn't want all the antennas. Now they have their first case of trying to get an antenna off a roof. From what we can see driving through the complex, it's taking them a while to get the antenna down.
Two years ago we had a client in a free standing house in a security estate get the necessary permissions to erect an antenna, only to be told that it must he lowered, or else fines. By the time the HOA were happy, his fresnel zone was so messed up we ended up giving him his money back.
My personal favourite has to be the managing agent who is part of a group of companies that also includes an internet service provider. Their complexes are littered with satellite dishes and analogue TV antennas, but if you as much as dare install an antenna to connect to a WISP, or the WUG, all hell breaks loose. Our branded vehicles have actually been banned from two of these complexes in Somerset West.
Some HOA's are simply petty. We've had situations where an HOA fined a client R300 per day for installing a 2.4GHz Ubiquiti Nanostation on his wall without permission. We ended up hiding it in his ceiling.
Never underestimate the fear of the radio waves. I kid you not. We've had HOA's tell us that the radiation from the antennas causes headaches. "You would not allow a cellphone base station on the side of your house. So why do you want an internet base station? The radio waves will fry your brain." Seriously.
Then there's the "Daar is nie pille vir stupid nie", where somebody ignored the 3M box with the two ST connectors on the wall of his flat, with the associated range of ftth services (up to 100Mb), and installed a Mikrotik Groove on his roof so he can get his 2Mb uncapped from one of our competitors - without the permission of the HOA. They paid for every apartment to get ftth. They also paid for a reticulated TV system so there are only two satellite dishes in the complex. Their reasoning was that they didn't want all the antennas. Now they have their first case of trying to get an antenna off a roof. From what we can see driving through the complex, it's taking them a while to get the antenna down.
Two years ago we had a client in a free standing house in a security estate get the necessary permissions to erect an antenna, only to be told that it must he lowered, or else fines. By the time the HOA were happy, his fresnel zone was so messed up we ended up giving him his money back.
My personal favourite has to be the managing agent who is part of a group of companies that also includes an internet service provider. Their complexes are littered with satellite dishes and analogue TV antennas, but if you as much as dare install an antenna to connect to a WISP, or the WUG, all hell breaks loose. Our branded vehicles have actually been banned from two of these complexes in Somerset West.
Thank you for your reply portcullis.
The current situation we're having also seems to be petty and to promote a monopoly in the Estate. But another WISP have various clients in side this complex and they are allowed to - this WISP's CPE's is also visible from front (street) view which is also in direct breach of the HOA Rules and the Estate Guidelines.
We have decided to fight it and have appointed an attorney. Will revert as soon as we have an outcome.
Good luck. I feel your pain.
I know of a recent situation where a landlord rents out a building to two separate companies. Company A contacted WISP B. They quoted them, but the landlord set silly conditions. Antenna not visible from the street. Many meters of trunking painted the same custom colour as the building etc. WISP B did the work as requested and charged the client.
Lo and behold. A couple of days later, the other tenant decides he also wants wireless and goes to WISP C. When his application goes before the landlord, he gets told; "julle kan doen wat julle wil". Needless to say the pole and bracket are sommer on the front of the building.
When the other client asked the landlord why they were treated differently, he was bluntly told that the landlord likes WISP C, but not WISP B.
Sommer net so!
Here's a good one for you. This week, we were approached by two men whos want us to roll ftth out in their complex. You can't run fibre for one house. We asked the managing agent to please email all the residents to gauge their feelings. This is what the managing agent had to say for himself:
Try this one, the owner of a building is a major shareholder of a company within the building. The company wants a wireless connection I.e one small antenna. The building owner then wants to charge us antenna rental of 1500 a month! So I said that is fine but I would then need to raise their connection fee by 1500, didn't want it then...
Logic....
Logic....
Crazy! Feel somewhat better to know it's not just us, had some odd problem here and there before but this current one is going to be interesting. More about proving a point, I suppose - but feels like a good enough reason!
Off-topic (guess can't hijack my own post) Lol! How's DataTill working compared to RM?
Really don't get some people's logic or rather lack of it!
DataTill is vastly superiour to RM.
We currently have a buggy version. We're patiently waiting for the developer to upload the latest version to our servers.
Unfortunately, it seems that our use of DataTill will have to come to an end as soon as we have a replacement in place. The developer is now the Chief Information Officer of a direct competitor of ours. This is a serious conflict of interest. Almost three years worth of work down the drain.
Knowing how limited RM is, must say DataTill looks interesting and much more powerful compared to RM, don't know DT pricing so can't say it looks impressive.
That is a serious conflict of interest, hard blow indeed.
If I may ask short list for replacements?
There's nothing that jumps out and screams; "Buy me".
We've got people contacting us, requesting meetings during Africacom.
All we have running on DataTill is the hotspot side of the business. We're not overly fussed if Herotel (or the rest of the world) see that we make less than R10K a month out of that. Maybe this is the excuse we need to kill all the hotspots.
This brings back memories from my time back in the breede Valley / Goudini / Rawsonvile area.
It looks like something that we need to look at.
Being based in Argentina - does bring it's own set of problems with time difference, support is not uber good or speedy. Have a mate running their WISP on it - apparently the latest version is stable and bugs a thing of the past. We've implemented it for R&D about 8 months or so ago but that version was highly unstable and very buggy.