Broadband: Every home should have it – minister
Friday 30th January 2009, 2:58PM GMT.
WORLD-class high-speed broadband should be available in every Island home as soon as possible, the Treasury Minister said today.
Senator Philip Ozouf has asked Jersey Telecom to investigate the feasibility of such a goal as part of a new drive to make the utility company work harder for Islanders. He says he wants to make sure that Jersey does not fall behind other parts of the world.
However, upgrading the Island’s telephone and communications systems and replacing old copper wire with the latest fibre-optic technology could be very expensive and lead to many miles of cables having to be dug up and replaced. New cables would mean that Islanders could enjoy internet access at speeds up to 50 times faster than are currently available locally. At present Islanders can download from the internet at speeds of up to two MB a second. Fibre-optic cabling could increase that speed to 100 MB a second.
It is not yet clear how such a major project would be funded. As Treasury Minister, Senator Ozouf has partial responsibility for the utility companies Jersey Telecom, Jersey Post, Jersey Electricity Company and Jersey Water, which are all at least partly owned by the States.
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I agree it is a great idea and hope to comes to fruition. The cost of replacing / upgrading the cables could be greatly reduced. It will mean however the various Utility companies and the States co-operating and communicating!
If anyone is having to dig up / resurface any of the roads, the required infrastructure for Fibre-optic should be installed. The roads are dug up often enough anyway, so it would only take a short time to cover the whole Island!
Southampton and surrounds adopted this years ago, and now as technology needs faster networks, it is there ready to go!
A bit of forward thinking works wonders!
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Once again the States of Jersey copying everything the UK does…
Why don’t we sack them all and replace them with one guy who reads the newspapers daily and changes laws with the UK. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper!
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Its a good idea but dont do it whilst digging up the roads for other purposes, wait until about 3 weeks afterwards then re dig up the road and lay the cables. Its much more fun for everyone stuck in the traffic and stops us getting complacent about getting to work on time. But the best part, especially in these times it keeps people in work, diggers, digger watchers, cable layers, cable layer watchers, tarmac layers, tarmac layer watchers…you get the point i am trying to make!
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Some people in the island would be delighted with 2Mb/s.
There are blackspots all over the island where download speeds drop to well below a quarter of the advertised rate. St Brelade’s Bay and around Gorey are notoriously bad and even parts of the outskirts of St Helier are lucky to get 50% of the advertised rate.
I am expecting 100Mb/s broadband to reach the island sometime after the bridge to France!
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How about when putting the cables in.. they also extend the sewer network… that has been promised for decades. Perhaps Sen “O” should suggest we have a “world class sewage system to go with our world class internet and world class waterfront and world class incinerator…… world class politics?” But to be fair to Sen O. did he actually say world class, or was it JEP spin?
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Good idea Philip the roads are already in an awful state so lets dig them up – AGAIN. Then again when you build a new city in St Martins for your planned population increases.
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It is imperative that Jersey Telecom be actively encouraged by its shareholder, the States, to improve its broadband service.
It seems that the company have failed to keep pace, offering slow speeds that are over priced. Something needs to be done regarding the wholesale of broadband to bring about competition.
Not a happy customer.
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There are several other options to digging up long lengths of road. Recently, a UK company called H2O has had success laying optical fibre through the sewers to deliver FTTH (fibre to the home)and broadband speeds that seem quite staggering to most people.
Another alternative is WiMax, which is WiFi on steroids! This can deliver around 24Mb/s to urban or metropolitan areas.
As the Chinese say. “May you live in interesting times”. We may soon be saying “May you live in well-connected times” soon enough.
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At last -this is what we need. It can be implemented from town outwards. We have to think about the future, before we are left behind. by the rest of the world.
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It’s amazing that this Minister comes up with this idea the same day as the UK Goverment announce that they are aiming for the same in the UK(sun newspaper friday edition)…when will the minister in question come up with something original
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A couple of friends in the UK enjoy broadband speeds of up to 20mbs, ten times the speed of what is available locally, and they pay much less for it.
Over here you have to pay for a telephone line as well as broadband on top of that.
I thought the island was supposed to be a leader of communications and technology?
How much longer are we to be left in the internet slow lane?
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We pay more than double than in the UK but get speeds of less than a tenth. Again, screwed.
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whilst i am all up for fast internet compared to the snail paced, extortionate internet offered island wide at present. I wonder how much it will cost us islanders. we allready get our pants pulled down with the current price of JT broadband (and everythings else on offer on this island) so i cant see them laying cables etc without charging more for it.
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I am sure that my mum would love a 100MB Broadband T2 fat pipe internet connection. Who will tell her how to cook it?
Rather than worrying about everyone in Jersey getting high-speed internet access, how about providing fuel and electricity at reasonable market rates. I cannot see how in the face of an economic collapse that the utility companies can possibly justify such huge increases, when reductions are in order. If it is to make sure that they make a profit in 2009 then shame on them and the so called ministers allowing this.
This is a painful time for everyone financially, except for the monopolies in Jersey.
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Michel and Ross, yes internet costs are high…. So why isn’t the senator asking why they are so high like he is with cars and in his previous role the cost of food?
Perhaps he should talk JT to lower the cost of the internet due to the relative slow speed we get compared to other countries?
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We need competition in the broadband wholesale market to bring about change. Jersey Telecom are offering a slow service at a high price. Competition has started to work with mobile phones, people getting better value by moving their number.
Broadband in Jersey is lagging behind the rest of the world.
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There isn’t the politcal will to introduce true competition as they have in the UK. Us the tax payer owns JT. If we want faster speeds at lower costs then the local loop, ie the copper wire to your house, needs opening up to competitors. The ducting that JT use for fibre also require opening up to competition. This will require us the tax payer to lobby the politico.
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I have recently complained to Jersey Telecom – a pointless and fruitless exercise – about the fall off in broadband speed. When I first signed up I was getting 2-5 Mb/s and paying £50 a month for the privilege, if I remember rightly. Then, out of nowhere, I got a thing in the post from JT saying that I was to have 20Mb/s for free because they were feeling generous and for a while the service was fantastic. Anyone else remember this? The speeds went up and were very bit as good as the normal speed across the whole of France and, if you’re lucky, some parts of the UK. Then last year it started grinding to halt and it wasn’t just my computer, which I thought was faulty at first. I even heard a guy in a petrol station complaining that they couldn’t get their tills to work with cards because the connection speeds had gummed up at busy times. I assumed this was just NFJ service levels and then I heard that JT are soon to launch a high speed service (at a premium). Well done JT – give it away free, take it back and then sell it to us for extra. Great marketing – really going to make loyal customers by the thousand. The sooner they are privatised the better.
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I am not sure where you got those figures from because as far as I know the initial retail ADSL offering from Jersey Telecom was 512 Kb/s (0.5 Mb/s) and that was raised to 2048 Kb/s (2 Mb/s).
Some people get a lot less than this due to the fact that the exchanges are in the process of being upgraded.
One of the reasons for a falling off in speed is that web designers are making pages more and more feature rich and hence larger in size and more demanding in bandwidth as they assume that everybody is on faster and faster connections.
Privatisation would not make any difference as JT would be quickly gobbled up and used as a cash cow by one of it’s competitors.
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lets use this as a way to lessen the effects of the recession in Jersey
Why don’t we dig up the roads “once” and put in ducts that could carry all utilities we know of + have enough room for the ones we have not yet invented. This could run along the footpath so as not to disrupt traffic. It would be cheap and easy for future access for maintenance.
It would be a one off expense we could use the strategic reserve to finance it.
Digging up the roads is a job the majority of unemployed could be trained to do in a short time (even the redundant bank managers).It is a contract that could be started and stopped as local employment conditions dictated. It could be overseen by a states department,TTS ?
It would be something future generations would look back on and thank us for.
It has been done in Paris and they are now reaping the benefits
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Everyone should have cheesy chips – minister.
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A great idea – Jersey has an opportunity to be world beating on this. Comparisons with the UK are ridiculous as large swathes of the UK will never get up to this standard.
If the States proposed an end to poverty I’m pretty sure a bunch of you would come out of the woodwork to argue against it.
Nice one Senator Ozouf – keep up the good work.
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Sorry. But is Mr. Ozouf our treasury minister or the minister for economic development? This kind of annoucement should have come from the latter, surely?
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It would be unfair of me to rant at the people who have posted anti JT things for the simple reason they obviously and quite rightly so have no idea of the costs or technical issues involved with providing a broadband service.
Its not a case of turning a nob on the magic black box and speed goes up.
The kit involved for providing ADSL2+ (above 2mb service) is expensive, requires experienced/trained people to install and maintain, this costs Money!
The JT core network(systemX for those who want to know) is 25+ years old, new 21st century kit doesn’t work with it, So it all needs changing out.
Again more money!
This all has to be changed out without interrupting service to 90000 people and a very tetchy finance sector.
To spell it out, that means running two separate exchanges side by side. The live one and the new one. The new one has to be tested and proved out to be reliable before a change over can happen. Money again!
These things aren’t of the shelf products with plug and in go written on them, they have to be put together/programmed.
Then what use is all this without providing off island connectivity that will keep up, anyone see the new £8m cable that was laid in the channel before Christmas.
Before its said, yes were all aware what profit JT makes, Who do you think takes it. The share holder, JT have to ask for budget to spend. Most people will agree £8m out of £13m profit is big expenditure for one thing let alone any of the above.
People on this island need to wise up and understand the limitations that living here brings. 90000 people isn’t even a medium town in the UK. Companies such as BT not only get massive grants to improve infrastructure but also have 52m people to get “profit” from!
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Drives me crazy when I see the UK having 8 meg for £10 a month or sky phone, broadband and telephone for £30. There are times when the dial up connection is faster than the 2 meg broadband.We are getting stiffed by JT whose slogan should be – pay more get less.
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PJG
That is a very good idea, however it suffers from one colossal drawback. Because its such common sense the states will never even think of it let alone implement it!!! I fear that once again we are being left behind. Since we are such a small island there should be fibre to every house around town and 24mb/sec adsl 2+ for everyone else. If we are going to dig the roads up lets do it properly – after all JT are supposed to be “World Smart”
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Lets have a whip round for JT – if Mr Someone’s comment is true why don’t JT drop the worldsmart homegrown tag and admit they are 2nd rate and have no choice but to be overpriced.
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