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The Current Facts Around Openband
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5 after 2 votes
Recently I resigned from the tech committee. I did not do so because of any disagreement whatsoever with tech committee members. They are a good bunch of people and you are served well by them,
Rather, I resigned due to strong differences over strategy in approaching our relationship with Openband with the board. I am certain that all of the board members are doing what they feel is best, but their approach has a far less likely chance of a highly positive return for the community then the one I have advocated to them. In fact I would argue the current approach of the board is likely to return a slight variation on the status quo while I presented a strategy likely to return a substantive positive outcome for the community with little risk or cost. I do not wish to continue to be associated with a path that is likely only to maintain approximately the status quo.
What I intend to do here is lay out the facts of the Openband situation for the community. I am limited from providing information that I received in confidence either as a committee member or independently, so I will limit this post to publicly available information or information I have been authorized to share. After the list of facts, I will provide some information on what a member of the Lansdowne community can do. For any of my facts, I am happy to provide more references or detail for any inquirer. It is not my intention to provide false information or omit certain facts, so I welcome additional information or corrections.
FACTS:
1] We have an agreement with Openband that is largely one sided and givens them the option to continue providing services to our community for up to 75 years at their sole discretion. There are ways for us to exit or renegotiate the contract, but it would require a breach of terms.
2] Openband has a franchise with the County to provide the video services to us. This franchise lapsed last year. They have no current franchise and they cannot renew at this point. The only available option to Openband is to submit a new application.
3] The OVS (Open Video Systems) commission has rendered NO opinions about Openband as a franchisee yet. They are awaiting a technical audit which has not yet been received.
4] The BOS (Board of Supervisors) has not yet taken any action on Openband. The county is not already agreeable to renewing the franchise.
5] The Southern Walk HOA has received a legal opinion that has led to them serving Openband a notice of Breach based on three issues. One of which is the lack of franchise.
6] Our board is not currently liaising with the SW Board.
What you can do:
1] Email our board and tell them what you think about Openband and what they should do. The email address is on our HOA website. Even a short and simple email will make a big difference in their thinking about the communities feelings.
2] Attend board events and express your opinion. Expressing your opinion to our board is the most important thing you can do.
3] Contact the members of the OVS commission and express your feelings about Openband and whether you would want them to recommend a new franchise for Openband. The email addresses of commission members can be found in the word document on this page: http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=326&fmpath=/CTVAC/Mem...
4] Contact our member of the BOS, Lori Waters and the Chair of the BOS and express your opinion. You can click through to individual BOS members here: http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=990
5] Write a letter to the editor and express your opinions... The editors email addresses are:
Paper website
email
Leesburg
Today http://www.leesburg2day.com/
editor@leesburgtoday.com
Loudoun Times Mirror http://www.loudountimes.com/
ngraham@timespapers.com
Loudoun Independent http://www.loudouni.com/
editor@loudouni.com
Rather, I resigned due to strong differences over strategy in approaching our relationship with Openband with the board. I am certain that all of the board members are doing what they feel is best, but their approach has a far less likely chance of a highly positive return for the community then the one I have advocated to them. In fact I would argue the current approach of the board is likely to return a slight variation on the status quo while I presented a strategy likely to return a substantive positive outcome for the community with little risk or cost. I do not wish to continue to be associated with a path that is likely only to maintain approximately the status quo.
What I intend to do here is lay out the facts of the Openband situation for the community. I am limited from providing information that I received in confidence either as a committee member or independently, so I will limit this post to publicly available information or information I have been authorized to share. After the list of facts, I will provide some information on what a member of the Lansdowne community can do. For any of my facts, I am happy to provide more references or detail for any inquirer. It is not my intention to provide false information or omit certain facts, so I welcome additional information or corrections.
FACTS:
1] We have an agreement with Openband that is largely one sided and givens them the option to continue providing services to our community for up to 75 years at their sole discretion. There are ways for us to exit or renegotiate the contract, but it would require a breach of terms.
2] Openband has a franchise with the County to provide the video services to us. This franchise lapsed last year. They have no current franchise and they cannot renew at this point. The only available option to Openband is to submit a new application.
3] The OVS (Open Video Systems) commission has rendered NO opinions about Openband as a franchisee yet. They are awaiting a technical audit which has not yet been received.
4] The BOS (Board of Supervisors) has not yet taken any action on Openband. The county is not already agreeable to renewing the franchise.
5] The Southern Walk HOA has received a legal opinion that has led to them serving Openband a notice of Breach based on three issues. One of which is the lack of franchise.
6] Our board is not currently liaising with the SW Board.
What you can do:
1] Email our board and tell them what you think about Openband and what they should do. The email address is on our HOA website. Even a short and simple email will make a big difference in their thinking about the communities feelings.
2] Attend board events and express your opinion. Expressing your opinion to our board is the most important thing you can do.
3] Contact the members of the OVS commission and express your feelings about Openband and whether you would want them to recommend a new franchise for Openband. The email addresses of commission members can be found in the word document on this page: http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=326&fmpath=/CTVAC/Mem...
4] Contact our member of the BOS, Lori Waters and the Chair of the BOS and express your opinion. You can click through to individual BOS members here: http://www.loudoun.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=990
5] Write a letter to the editor and express your opinions... The editors email addresses are:
Paper website
Leesburg
Today http://www.leesburg2day.com/
editor@leesburgtoday.com
Loudoun Times Mirror http://www.loudountimes.com/
ngraham@timespapers.com
Loudoun Independent http://www.loudouni.com/
editor@loudouni.com
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Donovan on -
Thank you for sharing this information. An interesting thing about OpenBand that most people did not know is that our network was being hacked/attached for at least a couple of months. What is really strange about this is that the attacks were being done inside our network (by address 10.15.0.227) and OpenBand was not aware of it till I opened a trouble ticket and I provided them security logs. OpenBand then identified the attacker and blocked the attackers IP address. Even though OpenBand identified the attacker, OpenBand allotted the user 24 hours to resolve the issue. Where was the network security on our leading edge network? And how could attacks occur internally without being indentified?
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Permalink Reply by Tiffany Jensen on -
what are the reasons why our community has not or won't serve open band with a notice of breach? Why does our HOA not want to join forces with the southern walk community? (anyone can pipe in here... not just the author... just trying to under stand things more clearly) As author, what did your proposal to our HOA look like or contain that was different from their current strategy with Open Band?
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Donovan on
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I think only John Whitbeck can best answer your questions. I think he is the only BOD that has been communicating with legal about OpenBand. What I remember from our Town Hall Meeting is that John Whitbeck and Janine Leete indicated that the HOA attorneys had advised several times against taking any actions against OpenBand. Additionally, John Whitbeck mentioned that the BOD had decided that it is not in the best interest of the HOA to take any actions against OpenBand or even try to change the contract.
If I had made any error in my words or recollections I welcome the BOD to clarify for everyone.
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Permalink Reply by Dave on
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I'm not a lawyer, but I would speculate that the HOA has not tried to break the contract because there hasn't been a breach of the contract terms (in the opinion of our HOA lawyers). I certainly haven't read the LOTP to Openband contract, but I'm sure that it is relatively bulletproof. Based upon my prior experience on a credit union board with an entirely unfair building lease contract, there are very, very few ways to unwind a well written, albeit biased, contract.
The Southern Walk HOA contract may be very different from the LOTP contract. Just because they think that they have a reason to act doesn't mean that LOTP does.
I would also imagine that Openband is not really in "breach" as they continue to provide video services in good faith and the county has not explicitly revoked their franchise. I would expect that the county considers the franchise valid until they say it is no longer valid. This eliminates any fault or liability on the county's part for a delay in renewing a franchise because of the county's delays or inherent bureaucracy.
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Permalink Reply by johnf on
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Dave,
I recommend reading both the HOA/Openband contract and the Franchise agreement. Both are available in the resources section of the HOA web site. Let me address your various hypothesis as someone who has read all the contracts including ours and Southern Walks as well as the franchise agreement and the applicable laws seen in section 809 of the county code.
There is no evidence yet available that our HOA has asked our counsel to rule on the potential for breach under the same mechanism and terms seen in the SW breach letter. This is one difference I have with the board. They had not sough such advice as of several weeks ago when I asked prior to my resignation. All reports of the most recent board meeting (Which I was out of the country for) seem to indicate that those same questions have not yet been weighed in by our counsel. Instead, they are taking more of a wait and see approach I understand.
It is clear that Openband HAS breached the terms of our agreement as per our contract as well as consideration of the Franchise agreement and the county law. The details of that logic can be found in the letter from Southern Walk to Openband posted in another thread on here. There are some differences in the Southern Walk contract, but in all areas related to the claims of breach we have identical wording. There is no reason to think that the same opportunity for breach would not be available to us.
The questions of Breach do not extend to the provision of the services. In fact, Openband is required to supply services (as they are doing) for up to 36 month following the end of their franchise. The county has the right to even extend this period to insure a smooth transition of Openband customers to new services.
The county has not weighed in yet on what the status of Openband will be. It is clear that the current Franchise HAS expired. It expired a year ago. If you read the Franchise agreement you will see in plain language that it expired and there is no renewal option available to Openband now. The only option they have at this point is a new application. The process for that is detailed in the county law.
Furthermore, there is no liability on the part of the county for a Franchise renewal. The Franchise renewal process is spelled out in the 809 section of the code. It is not the county's responsibility to initiate that process. Rather it fell to Openband to do so. They failed to do o and the franchise agreement contemplates that possibility. In that case, the franchise terminates and Openband enters the three year period of providing service during a transition.
To be clear there are some additional complications that surround easements. However, they should represent no serious problem in the case of breach. there are a number of ways that can be handled either through the county or directly.
Again, I recommend you read all the source documents and form your own opinion. All are available to you either on the county website or ours.
Regards,
John
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Tiffany,
I would rather not post all the details of my strategy on this public website, but i can post a few of the initial steps which our board has declined to take.
1] Engage the community actively in working through the issue. This could be done a number of ways, including an advisory group specializing in this issue. The board began to form such a group with me as the chair, but when I got a new job and could not chair it due to my initial time constraints, they abandoned it and moved this effort into the board. I would reform that group.
2] Survey the community as to their feelings and desired actions around Openband. During the time I was preparing to chair that committee we issues a very neutral email to residents asking for comments about Openband. The response to that request was overwhelmingly negative. To be fair, mostly people email to such things to complain. What I asked the board to do and they did not even vote on was to survey the community as a whole as to what they want done. There has been no cogent or reasonable explanation for not doing so and this is the greatest mystery to me about the boards activities. Southernwalk has surveyed their residents. I don't know the results, but it was very possible for it to be done by mail.
3] Issue the letter of Breach on the same ground as the Southern Walk letter. Southern Walk received a legal opinion that endorsed sending that letter. As far as I know we have not yet asked whether we can send one on the same terms or why we would not be able to. Issuing such a letter would certainly bring Openband to the table. Such a letter has some timing associated with curing the faults. It is important to get that 45 day clock ticking while Openband does not hold a franchise. The most direct cause of my resignation was a failure to recognize the time sensitive nature of this aspect of the breach.
4] Engage in an active liaison with Southern Walk and other Openband communities. Our board has not yet established an effective liaison with the community which is leading on this issue - Southern Walk. There have been concerns expressed around disclosure requirements, but these are unfounded as there are several mechanisms available to allow liaison with appropriate protection.
I would prefer to leave the rest of my strategy points out of here. In total, if I recall correctly, my plan had more that 12 such points leading to what I believed would be a very positive outcome for the residents. As I have said, there is no reason to expect the current board strategy to result in other than some variation on our status quo.
Let me know if I can answer any other questions. Please also ask our board questions on their approach. I also strongly encourage you to reach out to Lori Waters and the OVS commission.
Regards,
John
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Permalink Reply by viii_ball on -
I am missing the whole point here. What's wrong with OpenBand? They deliver decent services and are no better or no worse than any of the major telecom providers in our area (anyone a customer of Comcast 10 years ago?). Everyone should be singing the praises of OpenBand. We were one of the first communities to have 100mb Internet. As a small business years ago when LOTP was being developed, in order to make the investment in infrastructure needed for the services we have in the community, OpenBand needed a lengthy contract to make sure that they not only recouped their investment but made a profit (isn't that the American business model?).
I was on the tech committee for several years and all I ever heard was b!tching and complaining about OpenBand and frankly I found it to lack substance. What I heard a lot was "we don't have a choice". Well you knew that when you signed your mortgage to live in LOTP.
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Permalink Reply by Michelle on
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I've been following this thread with interest as well as hoping for an update from our HOA regarding any potential action with OpenBand. Four years ago I was with ComCast, and 2 years ago with Verizon Fios. I have to admit, in comparison, OpenBand is a disappointment with not only service but with cost as well. Several times a night, my husband I and lose our Netflix signal as a result of dropped internet. The channels are o.k., but there are not as many HD channels as the competitors. Addtionally, the cost of OpenBand is higher than competitors. What struck me with SouthernWalk, and I may have misunderstood, is that there could be a loop hole to also "drop" the phone serviceas well (I remain unclear if the loophole to "escape" our contract is only with the cable portion of services but also phone and/or internet). In comparison to vonage and other phone services, OpenBand is ludicriously overpriced. With Vonage, I was able to pay less than our "standard" OpenBand service and actually have long distance calling.
Plus, as members of an HOA, I find it a bit hard to swallow that our dues go to pay OpenBand for homes that are empty. My hope is that our HOA will continue to investigate this issue or better yet, take some action to get our association out of a longterm agreement that seems to have been a boon to the developer but it is the current residents of Lansdowne that have to assume the costs and live with less than ideal services.
Michelle
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viii_ball,
There are numerous problems that many residents have with Openband. The trend of customer satisfaction as measured by Openband's own data is downward and unacceptable. Loudoun county receives twice as many complaints from customers of Openband as Verizon does as it has 1/10th the customer base in this county.
Further, the main complaints that need to be addressed relate to the nature of the contract with Openband. It is a decidedly one-sided document that will last up to 75 years and no residents had this disclosed to them.
Many residents report that they would prefer to not pay for services that they do not use. This is particularly true of video and telephone services, but in some cases extends to the internet insomuch as 100 mb exceeds the needs of almost all internet users at this point.
It is also not clear that a 75 year contract would have been required to recoup and profit on the initial investment. The costs of installation of the services in Loudoun county has been widely reported to be in the neighborhood of 25 million for all of the main communities served. Unless there is a very bad business model with incredible inefficiencies, it is unlikely that a reasonable return on investment could not have been made in less than 10 years.
It is also not relevant to the residents of Lansdowne. We are not shareholders in the company and we need to do what is in our best interests. Our board has a responsibility to act on our behalf. If an opportunity arises to provide improved contract terms, we are obligated to pursue it. Openband should be required to compete in the same manner as other telecommunication providers for our business.
That is the American way.
Again, the idea that residents of Lansdowne were aware of the nature of the agreement with Openband before agreeing to their mortgages is not accurate. Unless you had access to information in some special way, you were also not aware that there was a 75 year term and that you would have no opportunity in your lifetime to have some changes.
It can be argued whether such disclosure is required under the law, but you cannot argue we knew what we were getting into.
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Michele,
One of the other points of disagreement I had with our board is the degree of communication and interaction with the community on this issue. They inadvisedly disabled our internal forums and while they have been known to monitor and occasionally post on this site, that communication is spotty and not very interactive. This is a marked difference from the degree of interaction with the board members seen in other communities I am a part of (through other homes) and other communities in this area. In my opinion, this is driven by certain of the leadership who are overly concerned with liability. Of course, a board should be concerned about liability, but not to the degree that the Lansdowne board seems to be. This undue caution is actually counterproductive to creating an atmosphere of trust and respect.
Southern Walk's breach letter will potentially allow them to exit or renegotiate their contract. Of course, there is no guarantee, but they could potentially end up with changes in the nature and costs of all of their services that are highly positive for that community. This is why, while I don't advocate a course that precisely mirrors the approach of Southern Walk, I advocate many of their tactics and strategy as being wiser than a wait and see approach.
As to paying for empty homes, it is fair to note that some of the liabilities on empty homes eventually get paid back to us. This, however, is not universal, and of course we carry the burden during this time. I don't know what our noncollectable write-offs are each year, but I would assume a substantive amount of money is paid to Openband each year that we never collect.
I would strongly encourage you to write to our board and county officials to express your opinion. I am afraid that opinions expressed here are almost certainly not "counted".
Thank you very much for commenting.
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