Jersey FTTP Broadband Rollout Now At 70 Percent

Jersey has completed more than two thirds of its planned rollout of fibre to the premise (FTTP) broadband.

State owned Jersey Telecom (JT) has so far connected 24,000 properties to the network and plans to reach 37,000 upon completion. This is 3,000 more than the initial target due to the number of new broadband connections installed since the project started in May 2012.

JT claims it now has the third highest percentage of FTTP connections in the world and has compared this to the UK where just 2 percent of all links are pure fibre.

Gigabit Jersey

“We are really proud of the Gigabit team for what they have achieved in 2016. It’s been our best year yet in terms of the number of properties connected to fibre, and sets us up really well for 2017,” boasted JT’s Daragh McDermott.

“In effect, we are replacing the Island’s entire broadband network, and are planning to do it more quickly than has been done anywhere else in the world – such a large and complex civil infrastructure project takes time, but once it is done, it will serve the Island well for decades to come.”

JT has also installed a Long Range (LoRA) Wide Area Network across the island with a view to establishing Jersey as an IoT testbed.

In addition to providing communications services to domestic customers, JT has a significant international division, which includes IoT.

The telco has more than one million SIMs powering connected devices such as heart monitors and payment systems.

It says the LoRa network will allow for low cost, battery-operated devices in hard to reach places and envisages that Jersey will be the ideal place for companies to test out their products. JT also says islanders themselves will benefit from smart traffic and environmental applications.

JT did have a spot of bother before Chrristmas however when a ship’s anchor severed three of the four international submarine cables linking the island to the rest of the world. All three connected to the UK, so all traffic was rerouted via a cable to France.

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