A consortium of major property owners has been formed to provide tenants with access to high-tech telecommunications services.

The group, comprising British Land, Canary Wharf, Legal & General, Norwich Union and Prudential, collectively owns some 18m sq/m (200m sq/ft) of property across the retail, office and industrial sectors, and is also seeking to purchase a variety of telecoms services for high-speed transmission of voice and data, image and multimedia.

The landlord consortium is being advised by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the investment bank, which has already had preliminary discussions with several telecoms providers. The initial phase will allow members of the consortium to wire buildings to enable constantly upgradeable fast access from tenants' desktops.

This means that small to medium-sized businesses, for which investment in information technology infrastructure is not feasible, will have access to high-speed services.

Anna Lagerkvist