JT Fibre project delayed

Thursday 19 November 2015

JT’s multi-million pound Gigabit Jersey project will not be complete by the end-of-2016 deadline.

The company has confirmed that they will miss the deadline but that work is continuing, after one States Member revealed that some customers had been told they would not be connected until 2019.

JT say that the rate of fibre connections – 15,000 homes or 45% of households – is now already the highest in Europe, and that 1,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cabling have been laid.

The company’s Chief Operations and Technology Officer Dave Newbold said in a statement: “We have pushed back the likely final completion in the light of actual experience - with a complex engineering program like this, you can never be absolutely 100% certain what you will find until you actually begin to do it.

“But, we are now nearly halfway (45% - more than 15,000 connections) through connecting customers to the high-speed fibre cables.

“To put that into context, Jersey is already now the most connected place in Europe in terms of the percentage of broadband customers connected to fibre cabling, and around third place in the world.”

The issue was raised in the States yesterday by Deputy Andrew Lewis, who asked whether the Treasury department – who act as shareholder for the 100% publicly-owned company – were aware of the delays.

He said: “With customers being now told to expect fibre not to be installed until 2019 in some cases… it seems JT are not engaged with the shareholder on the delay. Is he aware of further delays and is he prepared to publicise any requests made by the board of JT to further delay the roll-out?”

Treasury Minister Alan Maclean responded, saying that there had been some “re-profiling” of the programme to connect all homes to a fibreoptic network.

He said: “I have regular updates with JT on the operation of their business, including the Gigabit Jersey project. Members will know of some delays earlier this year and last which have involved the re-profiling of the project.

“I know that the JT executive are planning a briefing for States Members to give a full update on the position of the project, the roll-out timescale and the final budget.”

In February, JT said that they were a third of the way through the project, with 12,300 out of 35,000 connections completed.