Summary

  • Ofcom published 19 final directions on 20 October revoking Electronic Communications Code powers: 12 at the companies' request and seven after the companies dissolved.
  • One direction records a precise handoff: Affiniti Integrated Solutions Ltd is dormant, while KCOM owns network assets it once built. The land power followed the company; the cables went elsewhere.

A company can leave the street without taking its cables with it. Ofcom has now published 19 final directions withdrawing Electronic Communications Code powers from named legal entities. The batch is more than an administrative spring clean. It exposes a persistent temptation in infrastructure records: treating the name holding a land right as if it were the network itself.

The Code gives qualifying telecom operators rights to install and maintain apparatus on, under and over land. Ofcom applies those rights to a person by direction. In its August consultation, the regulator split the 19 names in two. Twelve companies had asked to surrender powers they no longer needed. Seven had been dissolved, so Ofcom concluded that their directions should go too. The individual final directions are dated 20 October and say the revocations take effect on publication.

The Affiniti file supplies the useful detail behind that dry tally. KCOM Group Limited supported the proposal and told Ofcom that Affiniti Integrated Solutions Ltd is dormant. Affiniti had built network assets for KCOM outside Hull; KCOM now owns those assets. KCOM has a Code direction of its own. Ofcom's final Affiniti direction retires the old holder's power while the identified network assets sit with another operator. The wires did not receive a redundancy letter.

The other side of the batch is less theatrical and just as important. Broadway Partners' direction cites Companies House records showing the company was dissolved. The consultation says some applicants' networks were transferred or decommissioned; among dissolved firms, some networks may have moved, never been deployed, or belonged to companies gone for years. Those are group descriptions. The published file does not give a new owner or a physical fate for every named network.

The lesson in Ofcom's decisions is prosaic and sharp: a legal permission needs a current legal holder. It is the holder that gains a route to install and maintain equipment, and it is the holder whose obsolete right has now ended. A register that keeps the two ideas apart tells operators, landowners and rivals whom to deal with when the work moves from old letterhead to the pavement.