5G and 100MBps coming to Guernsey

Wednesday 14 March 2018

Guernsey will be getting its own 5G network, 100MBps available for every house and fibre optic broadband in all of the business districts in the next few years, it has been revealed.

A policy letter outlining the plans in an update to the island's Digital Strategy is coming in several weeks. It promises to bring Guernsey to the forefront of digital technology.

The plans were discussed at today's IoD midterm meeting, where the three key objectives of the letter were revealed, and then a panel of experts were quizzed on how they would work.

The three objectives are:

• Fibre to the island's business districts
• 100MBps available to all island houses within three years, 10x faster than the UK
• 5G - the next generation mobile tech - in line with or before the UK

Speaking at the event; Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen said the moves could make us "one of the most digitally connected places in the world".

Colin Vaudin, the States' Chief Information Officer, was on the panel of guests at the meeting, along with Michael Byrne from CICRA, Justin Bellinger from Sure, Lucy Witham from the Digital Greenhouse and Phil Male from JT.

"100% of houses on the island can get access to broadband now; in that sense it is not a great amount, but they can all get access," Mr Vaudin said.

"I think the better way to look it at though is whether they can stream a Netflix movie - and about 75% of properties on Guernsey can do that, with what we call superfast broadband, normally between 40 and 60MBps. Interesting, about 25% of residences can get up to 100MBps already, but only 19 of those circuits have been purchased, but we are going to be making it greatly more accessible.

"This all really comes down to usage needs; in plumbing terms, we can put in as big pipes as we like, but we need to look at how much is actually needed for use - streaming a HD movie takes about four to five MBps - so this is going to be a level of service for a complex family or a small business to operate on."

5G itself is not just a faster 4G, but rather an entirely new technology with a focus on incredibly small latency periods. Mr Bellinger from Sure said it was not just going to be faster, it was going to "change the way our society worked".

"It is not going to be about what more can I do with my phone - this is going to change the way we do things as an island and a society," he said.

"This is the kind of technology which will be driving our children to school in autonomous vehicles in a generation."