Ofcom

We're just finalising our OfCom registration: a few points to resolve, but all fairly straightforward. Contact David or Judith if you'd like the details.

Company Secretary

We've now completed the legal formalities, so Judith Phillips is now company secretary for good and proper.

Police checks, routers, and drama...

A typical example of the ups and downs of setting this service up: we've known for a month or more that it's going to cost us a lot of money to meet the requirement to keep the records of customer activity which the law - and the police - require us to keep.

At one stage it looked like costing £2,000 for the software alone, plus heaven knows how much for bits of hardware, and we began to get very fed up with the statutory requirement for customer-session logging. Our friends at Herefordshire Council - also dismayed - bravely agreed to help out if we had to face a mighty bill, but there was a risk that the cost would simply sink us, and we'd have to give up. It would have been Lingen Community Broadband RIP, thanks to yet more red tape.

As the weeks passed other technical solutions began to appear - and they involved using freeware (rather than costly software) and some slightly cleverer routers (the boxes, flatish and about the size of a telephone directory, that control who gets to use what bit of our bandwidth and at what speeds). Yesterday it emerged that the preferred technical solutions was a Cisco 1841 router - but, horror, they cost around £1000 (see http://www.hardware.com/store/Cisco/CISCO1841?campaignid=1-22590961&gclid=CLmq8p6mwqACFUKZ2AodQ2HUew ).

Once again worry sets in: where can we find £1000? Do we really need it? (answer: if we're not to break the law, yes we do). Today a solution arrives, almost literally a case of deus ex machina: QiComm have found a second-hand router elsewhere in their network and plan to let us have it, for free. It's had two years of wear and tear, but who are we to argue? It will last us until we can sort out something more fancy, and we're very grateful to QiComm (again). So a happy ending - we hope - to yet another little mini-broadband drama.

Complaints, complaints....

The task for this week: Judith and David are signing us up with the internet industry's disputes arbitration service. On pain of a £50,000 fine we need to provide this. It will handle any complaint we can't resolve up to a value of £5000. Of course if one of us chose to pursue a complaint of that value against our own company then Lingen Community Broadband would go out of business immediately - and I'm sure neighbours would have something to say about that. It's also worth pointing out that if the arbitrators get involved - something a user can insists on if they aren't satisfied with the way we've handled a complaint - that will immediately involve Lingen Community Broadband in what are, for us, hefty costs. A single complaint will cost us £417.13 in case fees alone - and then on top of that we'd have to pay whatever the adjudicator awarded. And we haven't room in our budget for £417.13. We might run to a £5 Boots voucher - but even that's a bit iffy. You may wonder if all of this red tape is appropriate to a small community owned and run service with a handful of users. We certainly do. Perhaps write to Ofcom if it all seems a bit heavy-handed....

Lloyds TSB...

...if any of you have any leverage with Lloyds TSB now might be a good time to use it. We've been waiting since 26th February for the bank to allocate us an account number and sort code. We've no idea what the delay is - credit checks, apparently - but checking what (the company is only 18 days old)? And surely it doesn't take long to run a credit check these days? Ho hum.

Insurance again...

We've now got this sorted and cover is arranged to begin on 1st April. The cost, though, is no less than three times the figure we'd budgeted - which means insurance amounts to a staggering 10 per cent of our entire turnover. Amazingly pricey, but we went with the best quote and felt it was not something we could skimp.

Insurance...

....brokers are advising, and quotes are beginning to come in. Amazing how hard it is, in these days of forms and tick-boxes, to get insurers to understand that we are not looking for contents insurance - because none of our transmitters are indoors - and that although we don't need buildings insurance (ticking the box for timber joists seems a bit pointless....) we do have things on hilltops that need insuring. Anyhow, we're on the way.

Internet Service Providers Association

We've now joined IPSA - the Internet Service Providers Association - a trade body that will help by providing us with information and advice, and make sure we keep our standards up. IPSA membership gives us access to the complaints adjudication service which we need to have to meet OfCom requirements.

We're rapidly learning that running a community broadband service involves a lot of red tape...

You can find IPSA at www.ispa.org.uk

Company registration

Lingen Community Broadband C.I.C. was incorporated as a community interest company limited by guarantee today, 26 February 2010.

The company registration number is 07171300.

The registered office is Lingen Village Hall, Lingen, Bucknell SY7 0DY where company documents can be inspected.