Notice Under Section 12(6A) of The

Telecommunications Act 1984

MODIFICATION TO THE LICENCE OF NATIONAL TRANSCOMMUNICATIONS LTD

1. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry granted to National Transcommunications Ltd (“ntl”) on 20th December 1990 a licence (the “Licence”) under section 7 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (the “Act”) for the running of the telecommunications systems specified in the Licence.

2. On 25th November 2002, the Director General of Telecommunications (the “Director”), in exercise of the powers conferred on him by section 12 and 12A of the Act, made a modification to Condition 8 of Schedule 1 to the Licence, namely, in paragraph 8.10, the following new definition of “Relevant Year” was inserted:

 ‘“Relevant Year” means any one of the seven calendar years starting with 1996 and ending with 2002.’

3. The effect of the modification to ntl’s above-mentioned licence is to formally extend the price control period until the end of 2003 (as that period currently refers to full calendar years, but see below-mentioned reason for making the modification) for the purposes of Condition 8 of that licence.

4. In accordance with section 12(6A) of the Act, the Director hereby gives notice that his reason for making the modification is that analogue terrestrial transmission regulation is among the areas of Oftel’s work which comes under the new EU regulatory framework (see: the Framework Directive (2002/21/EC), Authorisation Directive (2002/20/EC), Access Directive (2002/19/EC) and the Universal Service Directive (2002/22/EC), published on 24th April 2002 in the Official Journal of the European Communities). In order to implement the Directives in the UK, it will be necessary to undertake a market review of terrestrial analogue transmission, where Oftel presently operates a price control. The present price control operating between ntl, Channels 3, 4 and 5, and S4C is due to terminate on 31st December 2002. However, the Directives shall be implemented into UK legislation and applied from 25th July 2003. To avoid the necessity of undertaking a price control review followed in short order by the market review, or the risk of a hiatus in the price control, the Director extended the ntl price control to cover the period up to July 2003. He considers that the most appropriate and straightforward means to achieve this is through extending the control in the above-mentioned way.