Farmer mobile phone rent income reduced from £5,500 to £3.50

[Psycho Warren]

Surely he just tells them to fk right off and gives them 30 days to remove mast.

[greygoose]

£3.50 seems very low, I used to get £8.90 for a telegraph pole in my garden and that didn’t even spread coronavirus, puts on foil hat.

[kiethton]

Psycho Warren said:

Surely he just tells them to fk right off and gives them 30 days to remove mast.

I'm sure that the lease is inside the act and doesn't offer the farmer that option...

[saaby93]

Darth Paul said:

saaby93 said:

How much crop money does soil raise per square metre? Somewhere between £3.50 and £5,500 for that piece?

This is the thing I’d say. Both figures are way off but if we’re honest, he’s had a good deal for a few years. Set a side is running at what, £100 an acre nowadays? Obviously he’s got the blight of it on his land, land he now can’t do anything with, and he’s got to give access to engineers to service the thing. I’m sure both parties to reach a better figure that what they’ve currently come to.

If that £5,500 is the only income these days for the farm cutting it to £3.50 sounds stingey.

If that piece of ground was raisng nothing for the farm in past years maybe £3.50 is too much

[ATG]

Lord Marylebone said:

Massive backwards step for improving 4G/5G coverage. Farmers and landowners will simply refuse to have masts on their land now.

It's compulsory though. They can't refuse it.

[CoolHands]

Don’t think I will ever feel sorry for a farmer

[skilly1]

If someone came to you and said I’ll give you £250 to put a phone mast on your property you would probably say no. Especially the huge ones.
That’s why the farmers have been offered more to encourage them to allow them on their property in the first place.
A lot of these masts were put up early in the mobile network years. So there was no satellite or Wi-Fi options. Mobile providers with throwing money at landowners to get their masts put on the property, some landowners had a mast for each mobile operator on their land.

Edited by skilly1 on Tuesday 22 June 18:10

[SpeckledJim]

citizensm1th said:

SpeckledJim said:

citizensm1th said:

SpeckledJim said:

£5,500 p/a for about 16m2 of otherwise 'empty' countryside was ridiculous.

£3.50 is ridiculous too.

£250 seems about right to me.

You have to make the farmer want to say yes

Just stick them by the roadside on council land if the farmer doesn't want the money. That patch of ordinary field was more valuable than Kensington.

That £5,500 comes from our mobile bills remember. The farmer couldn't make that growing saffron, never mind potatoes.

Oh dear, how much do you think the operators make from a mast, I'd wager its a lot more than five grand.

You’d hope so. Otherwise it’s not much of a business, is it.

[ATG]

I don't think "allow" really comes into it. It's more like a compulsory purchase. The farmers can try to appeal and delay the whole process, but ultimately their permission is not required.

Our neighbour owns an adjoining farm and there was a plan probably a little of a year ago to stick a mast immediately adjacent to the farmstead itself. He didn't have a problem with a mast per se, because the nearby village could do with better reception, but he didn't want it sited immediately next to his tenant's home, but he couldn't just dictate where it was going to go. Even though he owned the land, it was the teleco's decision to stick a tower on his land and chose where it would be placed subject to some pile of guidelines.

[simonrockman]

citizensm1th said:

Oh dear, how much do you think the operators make from a mast, I'd wager its a lot more than five grand.

It depends. Rural mobile coverage is my day job and it's pretty slim pickings. The typical cost of installing something like the one in the picture is £25k.
Which is why mobile coverage is so crap. Indeed it's why the government is subsidising three schemes to improve rural coverage. The main one https://srn.org.uk/ is a £1bn programme which is half funded by the operators and half by government. Typically it costs £3000-£5000 per house to provide rural coverage, at an average annual consumer bill of around £300 - which includes running the rest of the network, handset subsidies and the like - you can't really make money in a rural area.

Under ECC there is no mandated rule that a landowner has to give access.

Our model is a bit different, we find landowners who will host small cells, they provide the power and in return they get gigabit fibre and 5G mobile coverage. When a lot of the areas we are working in have no coverage and very poor landline speeds they bite our hands off for it. Our main depolyment is in Wiltshire where we are taking typical internet speeds from 2Mb/s to 120 Mb/s, We've just won a project in Wales where the nearest mobile coverage is six miles away and fixed line access is 600kb/s, That's a village of 120 people, it's very hard to build the business case to run fibre and put in cell towers.

So I very much doubt, even at £3.50, that the operator is doing well out of it.

[citizensm1th]

I very much doubt that any company is installing masts at a loss, they would not remain in business if they did.

And reneging on contracts with landowners is not going to improve matters for anyone.

[irc]

As already said the correct number is somewhere in the middle. Leaving aside the small footprint of the mast there is visual intrusion or maybe making plowing a field etc more awkward.

£500?

[skwdenyer]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

IIRC under the new Act the Telco can simply state it needs that piece of land and the Farmer can't say no.

[simonrockman]

citizensm1th said:

I very much doubt that any company is installing masts at a loss, they would not remain in business if they did.

And reneging on contracts with landowners is not going to improve matters for anyone.

It would be useful to know whose mast it is. O2 has a coverage obligation. It has to put some masts in at a loss to meet the requirements of the spectrum it bought the right to use.

[Klippie]

This has got me thinking...I have a street light in my front garden maybe I should be claiming rent from the lazy bd council...or better still waiving the council tax, that sounds good to me.

[SpeckledJim]

skwdenyer said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

IIRC under the new Act the Telco can simply state it needs that piece of land and the Farmer can't say no.

As long as there's a more reasonable compensation than £3.50, and it's considerately sited, I don't think that's a bad thing.

The benefits to all of us, including the farmer, from having a first-world mobile network are much much greater than the marginal loss of a tiny patch of land, and an ugly tower on a farm.

[Mammasaid]

skwdenyer said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

IIRC under the new Act the Telco can simply state it needs that piece of land and the Farmer can't say no.

Can you quote the act please? As a landowner, I'd say no to anyone who wanted to put a mast on my land for £3.50.

[Muncher]

Mammasaid said:

Can you quote the act please? As a landowner, I'd say no to anyone who wanted to put a mast on my land for £3.50.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/policy/electronic-comm-code

If they really wanted to put a mast on your land, you wouldn't have any choice in the matter, the operators have statutory rights to do so.

[Mammasaid]

Muncher said:

Mammasaid said:

Can you quote the act please? As a landowner, I'd say no to anyone who wanted to put a mast on my land for £3.50.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/policy/electronic-comm-code

If they really wanted to put a mast on your land, you wouldn't have any choice in the matter, the operators have statutory rights to do so.

Having had a quick read through, it's not quite as black and white as that. The operator and the landowner have to come to an agreement and if they cannot agree, only then can the operator can take it to court. It's not the case that the operator can say, "This is what we're going to do, like it or lump it".

In reality, if both parties cannot agree, I'd wager that the operator would find a different site if possible.

[InitialDave]

I can't imagine they'd want the hassle that would come from trying to maintain an unwanted installation.