Thursday 24th June 2010

Further to the letter of 17th June 2010 from KHPC to QuickaNet Limited and the subsequent emails of 21st June 2010 in reply;

It is clear from the agenda items below
1.1.      Presentation of Quickanet’s Community Broadband business plan
1.2.      Public comments

That the full intention of the Kings Hill Parish Council was to insist that QuickaNet disclose Commercial in Confidence material and Intellectual Property in a public forum and in the presence of competitors.

QuickaNet Limited has sought professional advice on this and has been advised that we cannot attend the public meeting on Thursday 24th June 2010 as doing so would put QuickaNet Limited in significant risk of being exposed to serious commercial disadvantage.

QuickaNet Limited is an ongoing business and has not ceased trading as a result of the recent actions by Liberty Property Trust UK and Kings Hill Parish Council.

QuickaNet Limited has already informed Kings Hill Parish Council that it would be happy to present the revised business plan for the Kings Hill Community Broadband Project to them at a later date provided that the meeting is considered strictly confidential and nothing discussed is disclosed.
Kings Hill Parish Council have not accepted that offer.

Kings Hill Wireless Community Broadband Service - Suspended as of 21st May 2010

For the past seven years QuickaNet has operated the wireless broadband service in Kings Hill on behalf of the community as an alternative to the inadequate telephone based ADSL service.  This service was run as a not-for-profit operation and in fact has needed continual financial support from the directors of QuickaNet throughout it's operation.  The service has also relied on the goodwill of many companies and residents of Kings Hill.

During the past 12 months it has become harder for the directors of QuickaNet to subsidize the service.  We have tried to expand the service offered by obtaining additional funding and support from local companies and KCC, to enable the wireless solution to become a truly self-sustainable community based facility.  While many of the negotiations have gone well with local companies and organizations, we have been severely delayed on some critical components by others.

Over the past few weeks unexpected costs and delays by Liberty Property, a company we rely on for housing our base stations, have been presented to QuickaNet for the continued use of their buildings.  This, combined with other risks we face of unexpected costs for using these buildings as base stations has made the current solution unviable.  We have tried over the past weeks to negotiate a solution with Liberty Property and Kings Hill Parish Council to enable the service to continue, but unfortunately these negotiations stalled on Wednesday 19th May.

In order to make the service self sustaining financially, a critical component, the connection back to the Internet, needed to be re-negotiated.  We secured a very good deal for a new Internet connection, but this required a three year commitment into a building owned by Liberty Property and given the above issues we could not make that commitment.

It is therefore with great regret that we must advise our users that QuickaNet is closing the Kings Hill community wireless broadband service at the end of this week, Friday 21st May.  As a result we have reduced the May bill by 50% as we will only be delivering service for 3 weeks in May.

We thank those that have supported QuickaNet over the years, it is with a very heavy heart that we have to announce the closure of this service.

The QuickaNet Team.

Should you wish to discuss the matter with Liberty Property, thier contact details can be found at: http://www.kings-hill.com/contact-us
And for your ease of reference:

Andrew Blevins (Managing Director)
Phone: +44-1-207-299-2540
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Susan Davies (Residential Coordinator)
Phone: +44-1-732-870-375
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Elizabeth Roche (Finance Director)
Phone: +44-1-732-223-424
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Tracey Lev'y (Senior Property Manager)
Phone: +44-1-732-870-375
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