5,000 Jersey customers now connected to fibre broadband

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JT has now connected more than 5,000 premises to Jersey’s new fibre broadband network. The project started last year, and is on track for completion before the end of 2016, when around 35,000 broadband customers will be able to access some of the quickest broadband services in the world.

Having a fibre connection in 14% of customer premises, which is double the proportion that we had in 2012, already puts Jersey 12^th place in the world in terms of the scale of its fibre-to-the-home network enabling broadband speeds of more than 1Gb/s (1024Mb). That figure puts Jersey’s superfast fibre connection rate ahead of both the UK and Guernsey.

It’s the biggest civil engineering project in Jersey for around 70 years, and has been split into three phases: building the core network infrastructure, running fibre cables past all Island premises and then actually connecting all broadband customers to the new network.

The first two phases are nearly complete. The core network has now been built, and JT has laid 790 Km of cable out of project total of 990 Km.

Dave Newbold, Gigabit Program Director for JT commented: ‘We are really pleased with progress this year, and I would like to take this opportunity to commend my team for their hard work.

‘We are well on track to complete the project on time by the end of 2016. However, we hope to do better than that, and the teams are working hard, and efficiently, to deliver this world-leading project as swiftly as possible. We know that progress is not as fast as some would like, but we are looking at ways to get through this quicker so that more Islanders can get the benefits of fibre sooner.

‘Once completed Jersey will be one of very few places in the world with fibre broadband connected all the way to the homes of every customer; that network is being put in place so that the Island is ready for the projected escalation in the services and entertainment which Islanders will access over the Internet.

‘Currently, we are simply switching all customers from broadband delivered over the previous copper cabling, to the new fibre-optic network; a vast majority will be done free of charge, and this is about building a new infrastructure for the future.

‘Once we are ready to switch a customer over to the new network we will write to them asking them to agree an appointment time to be “switched”; all we need is for customers to react promptly once they receive that letter.

‘There is clearly still a long way to go, but we are on course for completion as planned, and we will keep Islanders up to date as we hit the next major milestones in the coming months.’

For anyone wishing to know when fibre will reach their local area they can go online and see JT’s NEW online availability checker tool. By simply entering their postcode we will be able to give them an indicative time for when we will reach their area. They can then register their interest and we will keep them up to date with regular news.