There was a law brought in during the first expansion of mobile phone towers that allows telecommunications companies to demand access to install their equipment in apartment blocks. That has since been used – with varying degrees of success – by internet service providers wanting to put their equipment in blocks regardless of what the majority of owners want.
It strikes me that NBN is being unusually flexible in telling the scheme that it has an option. And there is a big difference between an individual owner rejecting a proposition because it offers a benefit that they don’t want, rather than a plan that would be to their or their property’s detriment.
Yes, there will be a cost, one assumes, through the scheme’s levies. But that is no different from any other investment in infrastructure that the owners corporation deems desirable or necessary.
Strata is an odd mixture of user-pays and collective financial responsibility. Sometimes you just have to suck it up when you are paying a share of something that doesn’t benefit you directly. Should people who have no car contribute to the upkeep or modernisation of the garage gate?
I can see how someone who has been smart enough to arrange internet connection via their mobile phone services – by-passing, for instance, an inadequate ADSL service – might feel slightly cheated when the rest of the block is suddenly going to have an equivalent or superior service and they will be part of a system they don’t need or want.
Is it really a matter of choice, anyway? Getting back to that telecoms law, I think NBN might be able to install the connections whether the strata scheme wants it or not. The choice comes when your mobile phone contract runs out and you can decide whether to renew or switch, which is not an option that’s available right now.