On a slightly different note, but still an email i just recieved a reply from OFCOM.
Dear Cold Fusion
[content deleted]
Ofcom welcomes this announcement. However, it will continue to work with the broadband industry to see whether even more might be done to make sure that customers are not left at a disadvantage when a provider enters into difficulties.
How about ... every ISP pays a "bond" into a scheme. The bond is equivalent to 4 weeks, or 2 months (or whatever) of their network access and hosting charges (etc). If they default on a payment to their wholesale providers, the wholesalers press the "alarm" button, and the ISP can then follow the normal process for being placed into administration (or whatever).
Pressing the alarm button also notifies the ISP's customers. However, they should have no interruption to their service for the 4 weeks or 2 months period covered by the bond (since the ISP has effectively paid the costs for this period). The lights stay on. During that period, the ISP either pays its bills, or sells its customer base to another provider, or the customer base dissolves away to other providers as soon as they are notified of the problems. Thus the ISP has an incentive to act quickly to secure any value from its customer base (by sale, etc), before the customers have run far, far away. The alarm button should also trigger the issue of MAC codes automatically.
ISPs will complain that they can't finance 4weeks/2months of advance payments. Well, if their finances are that tight, I'm not sure that I want to trust my access to the electronic world to them. Yes, it would shake out the weaker companies. Is that a bad thing?
The Directors of any ISPs failing to pay a bond should then be paraded, naked, in front of a representative sample of the biggest and strongest of their customers, each of whom should be armed with appropriate implements of torture.
Just my 2p. I'm sure the expensive brains at Ofcom can take far longer to come up with a scheme that offers far less protection to us customers.
That last bit might just be wishful thinking ... but Relevy/Patterson should be made to pay for the aggravation caused to Biscit's/V21's customers, and to former employees for their incompetence as Directors of what certainly once seemed to be a good, reliable, company.