NextGenUs UK CIC (Incorporation Number 07030978) is the UK's first and pioneering Next Generation Access Community Interest Company.

NextGenUs UK CIC future proofs the NGA interests of the local community by owning and operating the NGA network in accordance with CIC Regulations, as described here http://www.cicregulator.gov.uk/

Community Interest Companies (CICS) are limited companies, with special additional features, created for the use of people who want to conduct a business or other activity for community benefit, and not purely for private advantage.

This is achieved by a "community interest test" and "asset lock", which ensure that the CIC is established for community purposes and the assets and profits are dedicated to these purposes. Registration of a company as a CIC has to be approved by the Regulator who also has a continuing monitoring and enforcement role.

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**** Together We Are The Network ****

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Telecoms is about people, about community, about education, about healthcare - it's the 4th utility (like water, gas and electricity)

Data networks whether they carry voice, internet or TV are literally worth-less unless people choose to use them.

The future of telecoms is called NGA or Next Generation Access, sometimes referred to as FiWi (short for Fibre and Wireless, the two leading technologies used to deliver NGA to the community)

So, NGA is vital to 21st Century quality of life, health, wealth, learning, work, leisure - it's an essential utility.

The issue with NGA is that certain aspects of the network, the infrastructure, required to deliver service to people, are a natural unavoidable monopoly

- just as we have a single water pipe, gas pipe or electricity cable to our homes, then the same applies for NGA - we will have a single fibre feed

- the reason is that most of the cost of deploying Fibre to the Home (FttH) is involved with digging holes and making good again, so it makes sense that this job gets done once only.

NextGenUs UK CIC is a community interest company, the first UK NGA CIC in fact.

CICs have two unusual aspects:

1 - their assets are locked and cannot be sold to any commercial bidder, only transferred to another CIC

2 - any operating surpluses must pass the externally-regulated community interest test and an annual social audit

In this way, NextGenUs UK CIC recognises upfront that NGA creates a monopoly and acts to put people's interests ahead of profits and future-proofs this arrangement for current and following generations.

NextGenUs UK CIC offers local communities with the ready-made "pioneer-incubate-transfer" vehicle for their local NGA service, handling the technical and customer relationships involved whilst providing the assurance of the community interest test, annual social audit and asset-locking.

If in future, when the network has been incubated and matured, the local community chooses to establish their own CIC then the NextGenUs UK CIC model supports this through CIC to CIC asset transfer.