When I asked a similiar question this is what the OP replied.

In reply to a post by MCM:

I'm recommending the BT solution to my fellow directors and residents however it is all or nothing. What will hopefully help is that we have built up reserves over time and most if not all of the £25K could be met without recourse to surcharging property owners. If this wasn't the case I don't think we would have a snowball's chance of moving forward. One of our arguments is that the availability of NGA broadband whilst not necessarily increasing the value of a property should nevertheless offer added value to anyone purchasing or renting a property on the development.

As you are probably aware any leasehold property normally pays an annual maintenance charge, this I assume is what has built up, but would need approval from all involved.

But whilst it looks like this could mean it's effectively done for free, should any problems arise with the buildings then there wouldn't be much money in the kitty for repairs so to speak, and this could put people off the idea - blowing the whole reserves could leave them in trouble in the future.

I am a little puzzled. It is not that hard to write contract provisions that would protect you in the event of Hyperoptic either abusing its monopoly or going out of business. In any case, Hyperoptic only have a business if they do not get a reputation for overcharging their customers. The main problem, of course, is that they may not have a viable business at all, but once the fibre is installed all you need to ensure is that it can be transferred to an alternative operator.

In your position I would make it a condition of any contract with Hyperoptic that they would charge residents no more than the lesser of (a) £X per month, index-linked, and (b) their standard charge for other customers outside your development. You would also want to require that the fibre should revert to the residents association in the event of that Hyperoptic goes out of business. All of this involves a degree of up-front paperwork but the cost would be much less than £10,000.

Of course, considerations such as visual intrusion, etc might outweigh the saving and the additional speed but I would be somewhat sceptical about whether you have really got a final price ans schedule from BTOR. I hope so but the experience of some is that quotations come easily, whereas delivery on time and budget is a different matter.

does a contract with a company that goes out of business have any value, other than as a fire lighter ? It would be interesting to know how one stands if the official receiver or whoever is selling off the assets to raise cash to pay the accountants fees for winding up the company.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

As you are probably aware any leasehold property normally pays an annual maintenance charge, this I assume is what has built up, but would need approval from all involved.

But whilst it looks like this could mean it's effectively done for free, should any problems arise with the buildings then there wouldn't be much money in the kitty for repairs so to speak, and this could put people off the idea - blowing the whole reserves could leave them in trouble in the future.

The reserve that would be used is that which covers the provision and maintenance of services on the development such as roadways, boundary fences, street lighting, CCTV and our gateway. This reserve is funded by contributions from freeholders and leaseholders alike. What makes this funding a possibility is the "Water Industry (Schemes for Adoption of Private Sewers) Regulations 2011" that came into effect on 1 October 2011 whereby Thames Water assumed responsibility for the sewers on the development that were formerly the responsibility of the residents. The amount involved is less than half of the current balance of this fund. The leasehold properties have a separate fund to which only the leaseholders contribute. If the directors decide to proceed we will issue a section 20 notice and all comments received taken into account before proceeding further.

PS. Returning to my original post, this was more to set out both BT's and the mayor's current policies regarding EO lines in London and to list the alternatives we have examined to date rather than how we may or may not contribute to any improvement. I should have mentioned in my original post that we dismissed 4G as a real alternative given the number of users on the development looking for better speeds.

Edited by deleted (Sat 20-Jul-13 22:21:39)

In reply to a post by gah789:

I am a little puzzled.

Of course, considerations such as visual intrusion, etc might outweigh the saving and the additional speed but I would be somewhat sceptical about whether you have really got a final price ans schedule from BTOR. I hope so but the experience of some is that quotations come easily, whereas delivery on time and budget is a different matter.

The directors taken together have in excess of 75 years experience of dealing with contracts and include an accountant, a solicitor and two with professional experience of property management.

You also appear to have totally ignored the effect of being tied to a single ISP. Many of the residents would prefer to continue with their existing ISPs such as BT, PlusNet and Sky.

It is important to be clear about what is being paid for. The 'gap funding' model is that a group A pays a company B to build fibre infrastructure which then remains the property of B but is used to provide a service to A on pre-agreed terms. The 'concession' (or franchise) model differs in that the infrastructure remains the property of A but B is allowed to use it - again on pre-agreed terms - to provide a service to A. Under the gap funding model, if B fails then the assets can be sold by the receiver, but under the concession model they revert to A since B only had the right to use the assets.

The distinction is crucial in many circumstances and corresponds to different ways in which private investment in infrastructure is managed in different parts of the world. In my view it is inadvisable for any small group to agree to the gap funding model unless there are very strong guarantees that the promised service will be delivered. That, in essence, is the problem in dealing with BTOR and similar operators. You pay them to construct assets that they (not you) own and for which they can vary the terms of service unilaterally in future.

None of this is new. The merits of alternative forms of contract for utilities have been debated repeatedly by lawyers, economists and others. The precursor to current concerns was the franchising of cable/CATV systems. It is just important to learn from past experience.

I have no view about what the value of access to multiple ISPs, etc is or should be worth to residents of a particular community. However, property experience is no guarantee that people understand infrastructure and franchising arrangements. In these circumstances, I do have a strong preference that a group should control the assets that it has paid for, but other people may take a different view.

The assets within the curtilage of the building would easily fit into the type of contract you describe, retaining ownership. They don't provide a service on their own, the vulnerability remains "outside the gate" if the supplier went titsup.com . It would be easier if a competitive market for supplying this type of service existed or evolved, but we aren't there yet.

Near me is a redundant shared gas supply system to houses which was a good idea at the time. The "common" arrangement came to grief somehow and was not taken over.

Personally I think managed multiple-occupancy buildings, business parks, etc should be provided with built-in LAN-style high speed connectivity infrastructure.

I would imagine Hyperoptic rent the fibre into the building from another telco, possibly even Openreach.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by gazzyk1ns:

Unless you're in a very large town or a city, 4G is non-existent and where I live, in the centre of a town which has a population of 10,000, you can only get plain GPRS, which is obviously almost completely useless now.

If its important to you, I hope you've tried all the networks.

No I haven't, and I admit that I made a mistake by not checking the 3G coverage of all the networks before I signed my current contract with O2 (My girlfriend at the time and my parents are all with O2, so that seemed sensible at the time). Their coverage in Suffolk is appalling, though, so whilst it allowed me to have a top-end phone at an acceptable monthly rate, most of the time I've got no basic 3G to even start to exploit its features.

What I do know is that one mate on Three and another on EE are in the same boat as me when they come back here (They're based in London). I can't really "try" all of the networks, either, virtually nobody can, surely? Breaking contracts and buying new phones just to "try" them all would be stupidly expensive. I suppose the cheapest way to test all of the networks where I live would be to buy an unlocked HSPA+ capable phone with at least Android 4.1, then get free SIM cards from all networks and do the £10 minimum top-up with all of them. That'd still be something like £300 minimum and several weeks of wasted time with different numbers just for the "testing", so... not really an option for anybody, is it?

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Jul-13 06:13:34)

Easiest way

Get any 3G phone.
Get some free sims

No top up required. Pop the sims for all networks in.
If you see 3G you are good to go

My gamble is that t-mobile, orange and EE would have 3G in most of the area. They usually do. 3 would be 3G if it works (they have barley any 2g) but 3 is quite patchy often.

O2 is renowned for bad 3G out of cities. On O2 where I had 3G it was brilliant nonetheless.

If you private message me your post code I can look at coverage in your area and possible improvements on some networks & also locate your phone masts nearby.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 22-Jul-13 06:17:51)