Jersey Broadband Slows Down After Ship’s Anchor Cuts Cables

Less than a week after boasting it has the fastest mobile and broadband networks in the Channel Islands, Jersey Telecom (JT) has suffered the misfortune of having three of its four international submarine cables severed by a ship’s anchor in the English Channel.

According to the BBC, the first pipe was severed at 16:00 on Monday and the last by 21:00 as the anchor dragged across the seabed.

The three fibre cables link Jersey with England so all traffic is now being rerouted via a connection to France.

Jersey Telecom

However this is having an impact on capacity and JT says customers may notice some impact on services. Other telecoms operators may also be affected.

A team of specialists is looking to repair the cable and there is no indication when the Channel Islands’ fastest broadband service will resume to the best of its ability.

“We are working as quickly as we can to get our undersea cables repaired, and normal service resumed, and will keep customers up-to-date with what is an extremely challenging emergency engineering operation at sea,” said Daragh McDermott, director of corporate affairs at JT.

“It is exceptionally unlucky and unprecedented for three submarine cables to the UK to be cut in the same day, and it proves the value of having multiple links in the network, in order to provide a back-up connection via France.

“There are lots of cables running across the seabed, and we understand that it is not just JT who have been affected in this way, with other cables also having been cut.”

State-owned JT has been building out its fibre network since 2011 with the intention of connecting more than 42,000 premises on the island.

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