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See below for a link to the pro forma by-law
As the roll-out of NBN superfast broadband continues to apartment blocks, a plan has been evolved to prevent “broadband bullies” from effectively locking out faster, more efficient high-speed providers.
For the past two years, strata schemes have been receiving aggressive letters from some independent internet service providers demanding access to roofs and basements. The letters cite provisions in the Telecommunications Act originally intended to allow the spread of mobile phone services.
Some letters said they were coming to install their equipment in the block and the owners couldn’t stop them. The problem is, when NBN gets to buildings that complied with the demands, the internal network has been compromised. That can seriously affect their “vectoring” service which promises speeds up to 25 percent even higher than the basic fibre service.
“Vectoring works like noise-cancelling headphones,” NBN specialist Guy Richards told Flat Chat. “Our equipment detects the electronic ‘noise’ on your wires then generates a negative wave to cancel it out.
“However, if another provider attaches their equipment to the same wires, we can’t cancel their noise so, instead of a much faster service, you often get a severely depleted one.”
Faced with this in several buildings, Paul Court, a strata manager with Bright and Duggan, contacted Grace Lawyers for help with a by-law that would allow NBN to install its vectoring technology unimpeded.
“We had noticed an increase in issues being raised by owners on the different technologies offered,” Colin Grace told Flat Chat. “So we worked with a few of those to develop some safeguards to ensure schemes get the best technology available”
The resulting by-law, pulling together strata and other laws, forbids owners from installing equipment that would degrade the telecommunications system in the building. Since some non-NBN providers’ systems do exactly that, they can be shut out of blocks that adopt the by-law.
By the way, this is not anti-competitive – far from it. NBN provides infrastructure that different ISPs can use to offer improved services. It’s like building a new runway at an airport but not allowing cut-price airlines to clog it and slow everyone else down.
The anti-interference by-laws have to be accepted by 75 percent of owners voting at a general meeting and it may be worth asking your strata manager for a by-law specific to your building.
Are the broadband bullies bashing at your basement door? We have a pro forma by-law available HERE. Click on the link and scroll down to find it. However, get advice from your strata manager or a strata lawyer before you do anything else with it.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
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Excellent news: our strata received several letters from {a major network – name withheld by editor} threatening to instal equipment and telling us we could not stop them. We responded by asking our Strata Managers to let them know that they did not have permission to enter the premises and any attempt to do so would be trespass and the police would be called, that we were referring their letters to the Ombudsman, and also seeking legal advice. So far so good, but this will also help.
I am wondering if a by-law will work if they’re already in the building given the wording on one license agreement our EC has seen includes this language:
“”Owner agrees with XYZCo that it will not, after the date of this agreement, grant to any other telecommunications carrier or carriage service provider any right which is similar to any of the licence rights contained in clause 1 if their equipment will in any way conflict or interfere with the Equipment and/or reliability or performance of XYZCo’s Internet and mobile services.””
It will depend on what OC’s have signed up for.
Axl: Denying access to our internal building cabling (which is common property) has worked for our OC & now NBN is busy installing in our building.
How do I obtain the By Law re the broadband bully matter?
Strata owners and committees should not get too carried away by the “Broadband Bullies” rhetoric.
There was a time when the the approaches made to strata buildings constituted a threat to freedom of choice in the high speed broadband marketplace. The fear was that a single provider might connect to a building and offer one service only – its own retail product – and at the same time the presence of that wholesaler might “scare off” other potential providers.
Things have moved on since then and past fears no longer have foundation. I would suggest that the technical attributes of “vectoring” are not being properly understood and are being used by NBN as a means of deterring owners corporations from providing their owners with a choice of high speed broadband connection.
I draw on our own owners corporation’s experience to demonstrate that providers other than NBN may not be “broadband bullies” and that fear of vectoring may be very different from what vectoring actually is and does.
As an OC we were determined that our owners should get access to high speed broadband at the earliest practical opportunity. NBN was unable to provide the OC with even a general indication of when they would install FTTN (Fibre to the Node – our building). At the same time we did not want any single wholesale provider with its own retail operation to dominate our building.
Yes. We negotiated access for High Speed Broadband access for a couple of independent providers, who installed their Vslams in our comms room. This gave owners a good cross section of retail providers to choose from. No talk of “vectoring” and speeds as forecast of up to 100mbps.
And…as luck would have it along comes NBN six months later and installs their Vslam equipment. Great, even more choice and no interference by or from the NBN either.
The techo’s tell us that NBN never installed a “vectoring” module because they didn’t need to and … even if they had installed vectoring it wouldn’t have made any difference because vectoring affects not the connection into the building, but the copper wires distributing the signal to individual apartments. The copper to each apartment is not shared by providers – people typically sign with no more than one provider; so even if “vectoring’ was operated by NBN, it would not affect users of other networks.
My advice to OC’s is “before you spend money on by laws and restrict the consumer choice of your owners, get some independent technical advice about the vectoring bogeyman”
John Hutchinson
Mondrian Waterloo
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