The local regulatory org body sent me an email stating:
These equipment should not be used to carry local or international voice telephony or equivalent unauthorized traffic on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)
On inspection or otherwise if it is found by that the Equipment is used to carry local and / or international voice SERVICE PROVIDER/CUSTOMER agree without cavil or argument for to seal the equipment and/or to confiscate same.
I find this to be rather strange. Doesn’t this suggest that if I make a VoIP call or say use Skype, where my Skype account is a paid service that can call land-lines, that I would be breaking their “rules”?
ianal and such, but I interpret it as: you must not use it to implement a VoIP pxb that allows you to provide a service that bridges the local pstn network and other PSTN and IP only voice services … e.g you can not use it to link a bunch of Cisco IP phones to a PBX that also has a T1 voice card or fxp ports that allows it to make and receive calls over PSTN …
I don’think it covers you using Skype, it would cover it if Ms used this switch on their end to implement bridging to pstn, i guess there’s either royalties or the requirement to sniff traffic on request involved…
Probably some weird regulation that influences tax/import rates.
At one point, the country I lived in at the time had lower/different different import duty for computer equipment, so as long as monitors didn’t have HDMI (television) they were cheaper. DVI/VGA ports (there was no display port back then) were fine. The import tax difference was e.g. 5% vs 20%.
I think some DSLRs are limited to 30 minutes per video clip for similar reasons. Photo vs video equipment and different tax rates.
" … I think some DSLRs are limited to 30 minutes per video clip … "
Yes My Canon M50 has it, BUT … if you are using Windows or OSX Canon has an app that lets you ignore that limitation. Sadly they don’t have one for Linux. But there is gphoto2 that works for that purpose. And the reason that I got for the 30 minutes was heat, and " that’s what camcorders are for ".
It’s various countries taxes (classifications are slowly getting harmonized globally), as long as “individual clips/files less than < 30minutes” the camera gets classified as photo equipment, otherwise it’s video equipment… In most countries the rate is the same, but for the benefit of being able to better compete in a few markets a bit better, the manufacturers will end up “gimping” the equipment in a way that most of the market by spend doesn’t care about (not necessarily most of the market by number).
I’m not aware otoh of a particular classification for Telco vs. Non-Telco. … probably someone tried to pull some shannanigans and reached some kind of political deal with the government to interpret the import duty codes a certain way (they leave a lot of wiggle room and there’s plenty of weird translation errors that sneak into various countries interpretations).
And the reason that I got for the 30 minutes was heat, and " that’s what camcorders are for ".