Permission to cut road in Pretoria

Finally got through to the roads division manager in PTA. He told me that as a government official he can't give me written or verbal permission to cut through his roads. But he also will not lay criminal charges against me and will not even consider taking instructions from
Telkom to actively forbid us from setting up our telephone exchanges. He said that council legal department did have severe difficulties with Telkom who threatened them concerning their CCTV network continually expanding in the CBD. But he said that in the end Telkom relented and have accepted the PTA council sending data across the street.

I told him that I am phoning him to inform him of the fact that permission or no permission,
I will cut through his road.

You can get hold of him at 012 358 7911. Like mr.De Wet from Nelspruit council all he requires from us is that we give the PTA road back to him in a better condition.

He said that the normal procedure would be to formally apply for permission, but the only reason for this would be that if council were to lay a water pipe in future, they don't damage our network cable. He also would like to send metering data over such a network.

His overriding concern was not the fact that we will temporarily damage the road,but that council stays out of trouble with Telkom's legal department. Thus he can't provide official permission, but "unofficially" we can do what we want. Since a fronting company or Vans license holder will cut through the road, we will also not concern ourselves with Telkom.

He also admonished me that I make certain there are no road accidents when I cut through the road, since council would also be legally liable. I said fine, but lets presume I quickly cut through it and by the time www.datapro.co.za manager phones him, I am finished, then what?

He said no problem he is not going to take a grinder and cut through the data network on the sides of the road, since he did not give me permission to begin with. He will also not provide anybody with permission to damage our data cable.

What I want to do next is cut through the road and publish the video on http://video.google.com just to find out how formidable Icasa and Telkom really are.

My reasoning is that if council can send CCTV data across the street in blatant defiance of Telkom, then so can my empowerment partner.

Damn, what a confusing but good post to read! Ill help cut, or give permission, or check the CCTV, or something

This could get very interesting. Please keep us informed of your progress!

Come down to Cape Town I will help you cut.

Here we go again....

Tunnel ?

What about drilling/boring a hole under the road that way the road surface does'nt get damaged ?

Lay 3 thin [0.5cm] steel conduit's across the road - about 0.45m apart from each other.
Hold them in place with PVC bonded fibreglass strips painted black so that it looks like tape.
Place the cables inside the conduits.
Place a robot looking camera on either side of the road wif a strobe in it.

Hey - is that a speedtrap ?

But - jokes aside - Kool Dude.

I vote for using a pack of highly trained moles to lay down fibre in Pretoria. My only concern is the labour law fiasco is may spark as we will be paying them peanuts (literally).

captainwifi - well good for you.

I'll be one of the first to be watching the video on http://video.google.com. make sure to get shots of your fibers @ Rx.xx a meter going into your googled other parts @ Rx.xx

Somebody left a PM comment: "More random babelings without any proof"
The gentleman's name is Deon Viljoen, phone him and as him yourself at
the number I gave: 012 358 7911

I am sure Mr Viljoen will be delighted that his conversation with you is public and deny ever having it.
Please don't dig near any banks, I had a case several years ago where we had to get contractors to dig on Telkom's behalf for a 2meg line to our building, which had a bank on the ground floor. When the bank manager found there were no permits she got worried and tried to have the workers arrested thinking they were going to try and mess with the banks alarm wires or something. Proceedings were held up for a few weeks while the contractors applied to the council.

COMMUNITY SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

This is a community service announcement to warn the general forum populous against the person commonly known as "CaptainWifi"'s behaviour. He will waste your time with this thread. Do not reply to his posts. Do not entertain him. Do not engage him. He will simply fire up google and paste another 10 links in order to distract you.

Note the title of his post: "Permission to cut road in Pretoria". Misleading.. His own story indicates that he didnt get PERMISSION, merely that some council official said that HE probably wouldn't prosecute him. Does that constitute permission?

CaptainWifi said:

He told me that as a government official he can't give me written or verbal permission to cut through his roads.

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This is how he commonly lures forumites into threads, and gets the attention he requires. Can you imagine everyone just cutting through roads as they please? Where is the law and order? Behaviour like this (cutting through roads) wouldn't even be considered in LIBERAL countries, never mind here. There are good reasons for that.

CaptainWifi has this tendency to post conspiracy theory ideas and other miscellaneous insanities on this forum in order to make himself feel important. He then continues to harp along those topics, and dream up the wildest ideas on earth. To him, anyone that does not believe in his soapbox speech, or dares criticize him, is someone conspiring with "The Man" in order to limit freedom of speech. Example: he claimed that I had "banned" him from the Wifi forums, after merely WARNING him that his crank behaviour should stop. CaptainWifi is a keyboard-and-mouse anarchist. I bet he doesn't even dye his hair.

You may stop reading this thread now, or if you feel like it, or go to http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/search.php?searchid=322664 to see what other insanities he posted on a regular basis.

Whilst I don't discourage revolutionary behaviour (I engage in it myself at times), I do discourage posturing, lies, illegal behaviour, and generally untrue statements. CaptainWifi seems to be able to consistently match these criteria.

<End of community service announcement>

Message to the Captain:

El Capitano: You have some nice ideas. Very revolutionary and inventive. I like that! But for FFS, please try and think before you post. You tend to get stuck on a topic and absolutely refuse to let it go. I admire your tenacity. I admire your lines of thinking, but please, just try and think SOMEWHAT within the box at times. There are constraints within this country, as in any other civilized society. People cutting through roads willy-nilly is obviously not feasible for civilized society. PLEASE, stop trying to use every post on this forum to tell people that cutting through roads is perfectly legal. It's NOT. Your contact has said so himself. Everyone else can see, logically, why it cannot be allowed. The only person you seem to want to continually convince of this fallacy is yourself.

Your post's topic was blatant misleading. You do NOT have permission to cut through roads. No-one in their right mind would give you or anyone else permission to do that without tons of license, and red tape, as your contact also pointed out. Any roadworks (permitted or not) becomes their responsibility.

The "man" and systems are in place for a reason. That reason is to stop chaos and anarchy from reigning. It does not mean that your creativity has to be stifled. Think of a solution to the problem WITHIN the current box. Lobby to have the box changed. But for Pete's sake, stop being a nutter about the topic of tar roads, and cutting into them. Change your approach. Revolutions start from actions, not a soapbox.

TheRoDent said:

Note the title of his post: "Permission to cut road in Pretoria". A blatant, and twisted lie. His own story indicates that he didnt get PERMISSION, merely that some council official said that HE probably wouldn't prosecute him.

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Rodent you don't need to get the permission from the Mayor of Pretoria
to cut through a road. Mr. Viljoen is the person that must give you this permission. He is not some 'council official', no he is the person that approves all road works. I did not mention this but he told me that if I will bring him a letter of permission from Telkom, he will give me written permission to cut through the relevent road. His concern is a possible legal encounter with Telkom, not with us cutting through his roads.

And he said that he will definitly not prosecute me, not probably. My post speaks for itself. You have no intention of contacting Mr.Viljoen yourself to ascertain the true facts. You also did not contact Mr. de Wet, even after I Pm'd you his cell number. I am not going to post people's
cell numbers on this forum.

And speaking of the Mayor of Pretoria. Does anybody have his number, so I can contact the honourable mayor and ask him myself if he would have any issues with this venture of mine ? He obviously supports the CCTV roll-out for the CBD, why would he be against a CCTV/fiber/dslam roll-out in the suburbs?

I am pleading for calm and factual discourse. This starts with engaging the relevent people in Pretoria council and not making assumptions. And Rodent relax man I seem to have traumatised you!

You have not traumatized me, you are merely pissing me off.

CaptainWifi said:

I did not mention this but he told me that if I will bring him a letter of permission from Telkom, he will give me written permission to cut through the relevent road.

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Are you now proposing we commit fraud, by taking forged letters of permission from Telkom to him, in order to cut through roads? Or do you somehow think Telkom will give us letterheads for zero cost?

Let me ask you this: If you, as "Mr CaptainWifi" went to this Mr. Viljoen and said to him: "I'm starting a community network, I wanna cut thru your tar".

Would he give you permission?

No, I didn't think so. You just said as much yourself.

Just a little FYI: Pretoria has a fibre network running through the entire city from Hammanskraal to the CBD, a tiny little fibre on nearly every major electricity pole.

There's dark fibre through Pretoria. Most of it is being used for the odd 64K connection for council purposes.

You're speaking to the wrong people. You don't even need to cut roads. Just come up with a non-crazy business proposal that will make sense to councilmen.

Rodent sir please my grammar is not that good and perhaps my post's are
sometimes confusing. I don't mean 'forged' letters from Telkom. He just said that if Telkom were to give me permission to cut through a relevant road he would give me written permission to cut through his road. Or let me put it to you this way. He will make absolutely certain that Telkom has really given me permission to lay a data cable over the relevent road, by phoning Telkom and asking them himself. Should Telkom then confirm my letter he will give me written permission. Maybe I should have taped my conversation with
him. I would prefer that not everybody phone Mr. Viljoen tomorrow. Perhaps one of the moderators would contact mr.Viljoen and report back?

Could we discuss this issue calmly? On of the assumptions many people are making is that council has an issue with the temporary damage a road cutting will involve. After actually speaking to Mr. de Wet and Mr. Viljoen I have confirmed for myself that they don't view it unreasonable for me to cut through their roads, since I have such an excellent reason for doing so. Obviously Telkom will never give permission, so mr.Viljoen can't give me 'official'
permission either. So I will just cut the road without permission and Mr. Viljoen won't do anything about it. This is his 'unofficial' position. I really don't know how to clarify this further.

I am giving you the different views on the issue of cutting through roads in
Nelspruit/Pretoria by the two relevent officials that have to approve such road cutting.
Mr. de Wet told me that Telkom can go to the Lake of Fire as far as he is concerned, he doesn't care what Act.96 says, he is not afraid of Telkom.
Mr. Viljoen is slightly more cautious though in his reply to my request. He gave me his
official version and the 'unofficial' version. The bottom line with mr. de Wet and Viljoen
are that we can joyfully cut through roads, setup our own telephone exchanges and the
less they know about it, the better.

I am trying to give the forum the general thrust of the discussions I had with them, a
summary if you wish, not a verbatim word for word transcript. I am not trying to deceive anybody.
Phone Mr. Viljoen and ask him what specific measures will he take if he finds out that
we have cut through a road without his knowledge and laid a data cable across it.

Let's not conflate the two issues here:
1) The legality according to Telkom/Icasa of sending data across the street via
any means fiber/dslam/Wi-fi/copper.
2) The willingness of council to allow the general public to cut through their roads.
Yes, they are more then willing !

1 and 2 are two totally seperate issues. From my discussion's with Mr. Viljoen and
Mr. de Wet it became clear that Mr. de Wet has never even heard of the 'data crossing the street' controversy. Mr. Viljoen in contrast is more informed concerning the various
views of Act.96 and thus refused to give me 'official' permission. Mr. de Wet did give me
full and complete verbal permission. Mr. Viljoen though was sympathetic towards the idea and thus requested that I share such a datanetwork with council.

Now try and understand that this whole discussion revolves around point 2 and not point 1, the legalities of sending data across the street. You can't cut through roads if council will
activly attempt to stop you from doing so. Point 1 has got zip,nada, zero to do with
local council. Council don't have to take instructions from Icasa or Telkom. I am trying
to get across that as far as point2 is concerned we have permission to cut through any
road, either officially or unoffiically.

It is amusing for people like ScrnScrm in post nr.18 on this thread to warn me sternly about the dangers of sending data across the street via fiber, but not in the same breath warning Rodent about the terrible dangers of sending that exact same data across the street via Wi-fi. The issue with point 1 is not the transmission medium copper/wireless but
data crossing the street.

ScrnScrm why are you so concerned about sending data across the street via Fiber, but not via Wi-fi?

captainwifi said:

Rodent sir please my grammar is not that good and perhaps my post's are sometimes confusing.

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No shit.

captainwifi said:

I don't mean 'forged' letters from Telkom. He just said that if Telkom were to give me permission to cut through a relevant road he would give me written permission to cut through his road.

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OK. How exactly do you propose that Telkom give YOU a letter, giving you permission to cut through a road? Excuse me if I'm getting "confused" by your posts, but WHY would Telkom give you a letter, to cut through a tar road? For the life of me, I cannot think of one. I think the chances of Telkom giving you a letter to lay cables are like what, 0% ?

captainwifi said:

Or let me put it to you this way. He will make absolutely certain that Telkom has really given me permission to lay a data cable over the relevent road, by phoning Telkom and asking them himself. Should Telkom then confirm my letter he will give me written permission.

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You are talking gibberish here again. WHY ON EARTH WOULD TELKOM DO THIS?

captainwifi said:

Maybe I should have taped my conversation with
him. I would prefer that not everybody phone Mr. Viljoen tomorrow.
Perhaps one of the moderators would contact mr.Viljoen and report back?

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Yeah, perhaps you should have taped it. Here's a wild idea. Instead of trying to convince one of us to confirm these facts with Mr. Viljoen, how about you supply a recorded telephone conversation. After all, YOU are the one with a point to prove. Not us moderators.

captainwifi said:

Could we discuss this issue calmly?

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How about we discuss it rationally without relying on your lies and insinuations?

@captainwifi : you still trying to lay your own fibre network down mate?
I think we have debated this ad nauseum before, with full techinical explanations supplied as to what the challenges are (http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=18036&page=6)

But I digress : back to the subject at hand - laying telecommunications circuits across public boundaries. In short, it is regulated. You may not do it unless Telkom cannot provide you the service, or expressly agree to it. Otherwise you are breaking the law.
For the record, the only "people" who are exempt from this are the military, eskom and transnet (over and above telkom).
In the case of the pretoria municipality, they are most probably leveraging infrastructure "apparently" laid down by the military to service their cctv infrastructure, so they dont have to get regulatory approval like you do.
If i were in your position, I would cease and desist immediately with your plans until you have permission from Telkom...

captainwifi said:

Here is another way of laying a fiber cable. Mr.Viljoen will give you written permission to cut through the road and lay a 'water pipe' across the road. Well then all you do is lay the fiber cable with it!

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Now, would it have been this difficult for you to say that from the beginning?

Don't distract from the topic, Mr Wifi. You said that Telkom would be giving you permission. This is the path you led us upon. How do you intend to do that? Please justify your topic, retract it, or start again.