I got a phone call today from a very pleasant lady at NATS who explained that priority was been given to those applicants who had no permanant AFTN address and that those applicants such as us (airfields) were being put to the back of the queue, indeed existing airfields who had primary AFTN connections thorugh the normal channels were having existing Afpex facilities withdrawn to enable more private pilots etc to be allocated the facility.
I strongly suspect that when the licensing issue is sorted, airfields like us who want to use it as a back up facilities will probably have to pay for it whereas, hopefully, those who want it for the purpose it was designed for, will get it for nothing.