Tourists visiting Israel might be completely confused and rightfully upset when they realize their iPad’s would be confiscated on arrival, as has been the case for at least 11 tourists at the Ben-Gurion International Airport.

The head of customs at Ben-Gurion International Airport said yesterday they have confiscated 10 iPads, including those their owners declared and on which they offered to pay the 16% VAT required by law. via haaretz.com Isreal News

The Article goes on to (not really) explain the reason by simply blaming it on the iPad not being compatible with “Israels wireless standards”?

The ministry has not given the device categorical approval required for wireless devices; and ministry officials say its wireless technology is not compatible with Israeli standards.

ISRAEL wireless standards? Having worked as a IT Infrastructure Manager before and qualified in all things Cisco, I’ve never quite been so confused? Unless Israel decided NOT to follow any standards I cannot think of why they are causing such a fuss.

The 802.11 wireless standards are universal, and they specify the different wavelengths or bands and power that is generally used in different countries, so if they decided to use the US wavelenghts for something that would interfere with everyone else in the world’s wifi device would make no sense.

Countries apply their own regulations to both the allowable channels, allowed users and maximum power levels within this frequency ranges. Consult your local authorities as these regulations may be out of date as they are subject to change at any time. Most of the world will allow the first thirteen channels in the spectrum.

channel	frequency (MHz)	North America [3]	Japan[3]	Most of worldA [3][4][5][6][7]
1	2412	Yes	Yes	Yes
2	2417	Yes	Yes	Yes
3	2422	Yes	Yes	Yes
4	2427	Yes	Yes	Yes
5	2432	Yes	Yes	Yes
6	2437	Yes	Yes	Yes
7	2442	Yes	Yes	Yes
8	2447	Yes	Yes	Yes
9	2452	Yes	Yes	Yes
10	2457	Yes	Yes	Yes
11	2462	Yes	Yes	Yes
12	2467	NoB	Yes	Yes
13	2472	NoB	Yes	Yes
14	2484	No	.11b onlyC	No

Quick introduction between the diffences

Most of you would never have realised there is a difference, this is mostly because for users the experience is transparent, and the only difference is in the wireless BROADCASTING equipment and not so much the devices, which are generally manufactured to work with any Wireless equipment that conforms to the Wifi standard, making it usable anywhere in the world.

Standards in Europe and US are slightly different, in EU is IEEE 802.11b standard, in US is 802.11g standard, but most of the laptops are made with support to both standards so maybe you wouldn’t have problems in Paris.

Wikipedia’s Wifi standards explanation also shows that most devices manufactured can work anywhere in the world due to the proper implementation of the Wifi Standards.

802.11b and 802.11g use the 2.4 GHz ISM band, operating in the United States u

Or possibly the Channels that the device is allowed to connect to:

Channels and international compatibility

See also: List of WLAN channels

Graphical representation of Wi-Fi channels in 2.4 GHz band

802.11 divides each of the above-described bands into channels, analogously to how radio and TV broadcast bands are sub-divided but with greater channel width and overlap. For example the 2.4000–2.4835 GHz band is divided into 13 channels each of width 22 MHz but spaced only 5 MHz apart, with channel 1 centered on 2.412 GHz and 13 on 2.472 GHz to which Japan adds a 14th channel 12 MHz above channel 13.

Availability of channels is regulated by country, constrained in part by how each country allocates radio spectrum to various services. At one extreme, Japan permits the use of all 14 channels (with the exclusion of 802.11g/n from channel 14), while at the other Spain initially allowed only channels 10 and 11 and France allowed only 10, 11, 12 and 13 (now both countries follow the European model of allowing channels 1 through 13^[11][12]). Most other European countries are almost as liberal as Japan, disallowing only channel 14, while North America and some Central and South American countries further disallow 12 and 13. For more details on this topic, see List of WLAN channels.