The service from JT is just not good enough
Wednesday 4th February 2009, 3:00PM GMT.
From David Ezekiel, director, Nitel.
I MUST take issue with Tim Ringsdore, of Jersey Telecom stating the following (JEP, 30 January): ‘We already provide a high-quality broadband service that reaches over 99% of homes and businesses and we are currently running a customer trial for 8MB service with a view to rolling these out Islandwide.’
The Jersey Telecom price is for the first year (£150 installation and £74.99 per month). A UK typical price for a much better service is £24 per month.
The poor quality is the real issue here – 1:1 contention in the UK which is suitable to run business applications such as VoIP and SIP.
Jersey Telecom is simply drip-feeding the broadband service and Jersey is seriously lagging behind the UK and the rest of Europe. Jersey Telecom’s 8MB service has a poor upload speed of only 0.512KB per second, which is not suitable to run business applications or VoIP reliably.
The JCRA have been aware of this for many years. The Jersey Telecom broadband service is like putting a light on in the living room and getting only a flicker.
This service is simply not good enough. Jersey Telecom has had all the resources from the £88 million generated by being the incumbent and dominant player. They still operate as a monopoly in the fixed line services and there is no number portability for any of the fixed line services here in Jersey.
Nitel House,
Coie Lane,
St Helier.
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The simple fact is that if the States do not get their finger out and push Jersey Telecom into upgrading and improving their broadband offering they will find that the finance industry will be off to a place where the phone system does a little more than work.
The ADSL service in the island is very far from being worldclass and a lot of the island’s competitors are treating the installation of advanced communications as a strategic asset vital to the survival of their industries.
So fingers out now!
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Why oh why didn’t they sell this off to a major telecommunications company that would have supplied such services? The people who put it upon themselves to stop the sale of JT are really to blame here and it will only get worse. JT has not got the kind of finance that the major players can dive into.
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There is no consistency in the figures that are being thrown about in this letter. He is quoting prices for Jt to provide an unlimited business broadband service with a fixed IP address – designed for hosting websites with an upload speed of 512Kb/s (not sure where 0.512KB comes from – is this a new upload speed that only Nitel know about?)
As for VoIP – I have no problem running this service on 384Kb upload so I fail to see the need to have so much upload speed.
UK prices – this is interesting – please can Mr Ezekial give us some examples of companies that offer unlimited broadband with fixed IP for £24 per month? I am yet to find one. And also – and I saved this for last seeing as we are talking about the director of a computer company – please give ONE single example of any company providing broadband with a contention of 1:1. This is the most ridiculous point of the entire letter and I am not surprised JT have not even graced your letter with a response.
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But as usual on this island, no matter how many of us complain, we’ll still get the same rubbish response – this time its broadband.
To add insult to injury we’ve been charged for a long while now for a faster service that never happens, and it’s not only businesses. Home users too are paying for something they don’t get.
If telecoms can’t cope then give it to a company who can, or is this too simple?
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Lucky you Michael! Our service is near to ridiculous …
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There seems to be a real lack of understanding of economies of scale. People base their arguments on what they see in a 30 second advert on Television advertising superfast broadband for pennies a month, anyone who has relatives in the UK may have first hand experience of their broadband, the grass isn’t always greener.
The major players in the UK who install and maintain the infrastructure generate more profit in a week than a tadpole (in comparison) company like JT could in a year. Then there is the amount of customers available to actually provide to and charge for services. There are roughly 40 million potential customers available in the UK (conservastively) compaired to 50 thousand (optimistic)customers in Jersey. See the difference??? This brings us to actual cost of purchasing, installing and maintaining a network. I have first hand experience of the cost in impementing an inter-office network so can only imagine the astronomical cost involved in an island-wide fibre network. Where does this money come from? The small customer base, the other telco operators in the Island…I think not!!!
The comparatively small profits JT does make ends up back in the States coffers to fund projects like new inciner
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Sue, you seem to miss my point. I have no different a service to any other residential service on the island. If your service is far too slow to use then you should be in touch with your supplier to ask them to look at ways of fixing this. The point I am making is that you can stream live TV on a 2Meg line with no delays. Although our suppliers often fail to provide a full servie to this level – which I am sure will be easilly achievable with the 8Meg service – normal use does not require the level of service that Mr Ezekial is asking for. The average broadband speed in the UK is below 3Mb/s – it is only in certain areas that super-fast speeds are acheivable. Believe me, I have looked into this issue in quite a lot of depth and we really are not miles behind the UK.
A major problem with people’s broadband is that many houses still have old wiring in their property. Renewing this can improve the quality of your internet service, but as with most things, people are rarely willing to pay to have this done. This is not the responsibility of your internet provider, it is the responsibility of the property owner. Any other cabling issues should, and generally will, be taken care of free of charge by your operator (in this case JT) and you should always ask them to look at ways of improving your service.
If we really want to compare our service with a high level, look at Korea who are currently testing a 1Gb/s broadband service – 500 times faster than we currently have in Jersey. And although this may sound perfect – most home computers are unable to process data that fast so yet again we will be wasting the speed that is on offer.
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Thanks for your instructional comment Michael, but we’ve complained to JT and all the available ‘experts’ and the service is still ridiculous to say the least.
I cannot comment on what problems older properties have, but we built ours in 2004/2005 to a high spec, with provision for all the services. This obviously proves that its not just the people who are ‘rarely willing to pay to have this done’ who suffer.
Complaint gets us nowhere – nothing new there of course!
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The Island’s business needs to be kept up to speed with the latest telecomunications technologies available out there. The current broadband speeds have not change for sometime and are behind the UK. Like I said earlier, this is the price we are now paying for not selling JT to a company that already had this technology in use. Because JT is still States owned, profits for the States is more important than actually services people. A Government owned service like this in 2009 is literally unheard of elsewhere.
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Michael’s first comment is correct – the figures and comparisons used are utter nonsense. I’d be interested to know if Mr Ezekiel’s original letter contained this nonsense, or whether they were introduced during editing.
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