South Africa:
1. Your government is a business with a primary goal of making money.
2. Your government earns income from spectrum allocation.
3. Your government has shares in telecommunications companies.
4. Once everyone has “line of sight” from their bedrooms of a small cell less than 100m away the property values argument will likely fall away as a cell tower opposing argument.
5. The current Electronic Communications Amendment Bill 2018 in the S.A. Parliament ensures that (if not already the case) telecommunication companies will have utility company status in law.
6. The provision of utilities is a fundamental right overruling land owners rights.
7. The current Bill in parliament places emphasis on a special “Rapid Deployment Team”
8. This Rapid Deployment Team will ensure municipalities do not interfere with “progress”.
9. President Cyril Ramaposa endorses rapid deployment of the new telecommunications technology.
10. In South Africa the telecommunication “utility” seems to take precedent over but not limited to such basic rights as sanitation ( flush toilets for schools), water (Cape Town rationing and financial penalties) and electricity (periodic area rationing).
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