Gigabit Jersey Celebrates 10,000th Fibre Customer

State-owned Jersey Telecom says 10,000 homes and businesses now receive fibre services from either itself or rival Sure and adds that the roll-out of superfast broadband on the island is on track to be completed by 2016.

The Gigabit Jersey programme is currently deploying fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology across Jersey, replacing the island’s existing copper infrastructure and offering speeds of up to 1Gbps.

In contrast, the vast majority of the UK’s rollout of fibre uses Fibre-to-the cabinet (FTTC) technology, which still uses copper for the final few metres of the connection.

Jersey Telecom fibre

Jersey Telecom has been working on the fibre network since 2011 and has been rolling it out in stages, in order to minimise disruption and to ensure it has access to all 42,000 homes in the crown dependency, as wellas all the businesses.

As a crown dependency of the UK, Jersey is not covered by the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme and Gigabit Jersey has been part-funded by the Jersey government, which requires Jersey Telecom to open up the network to other providers – something it only agreed to do late last year.

The company has given the 10,000^th fibre customer a complimentary one year 1Gbps broadband subscription in celebration of the milestone.

“We are absolutely delighted to have reached this very important landmark in our Gigabit Jersey programme which is already revolutionising the way Islanders use the Internet and bringing many advantages for Jersey,” says Dave Newbold, Gigabit director at Jersey Telecom.

While superfast broadband is gathering pace on Jersey, the Channel Islands does not yet have a commercial 4G service. The spectrum licences for LTE were only awarded last month, with Jersey Telecom, Sure and Airtel Vodafone emerging victorious.

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