The majority of Bailiwick homes will be
enjoying faster internet access as new services are launched this
week.
More than 12,000 residential lines will be
upgraded over the course of the week beginning at the St Martin and
St Peter exchanges on Tuesday (13 May), Castel and Sark exchanges
on Wednesday (14 May), Thursday (15 May) at the St Sampson and
Alderney exchanges, and Friday (16 May) at the Central and Admiral
Park exchanges.
Engineers have installed new equipment at all
seven Bailiwick exchanges as part of the £2.5 million upgrade to
local broadband services which will double the speed of the current
wholesale broadband products, so that local Internet Service
Providers (ISPs), and all their customers, pay the same as they do
now but for a faster connection speed.
Over the past four weeks Cable & Wireless
has been trialling the new equipment on a sample of 600 homes to
ensure a smooth transition to the new service.
Chief technical officer for Cable and Wireless
Russell Sharman said that with the installation complete, and the
trial returning positive feedback, rollout of the new service will
go ahead immediately.
“We have re-wired 30,000 individual connections
and spent the last four weeks testing the new service, and are now
confident that we can go ahead with a Bailiwick-wide launch with
minimal disruption for the ISPs and customers.”
Business premises, and the final households,
will be manually upgraded from this weekend (16th May) so that they
can be closely monitored to ensure a smooth transition. All lines
are scheduled to have been updated by Friday 23rd May 2008.
For a 2Mb service, customers generally need to
be within four kilometres of their exchange, and for an 8Mb service
within 2.5 kilometres. Any further away and they are likely to
experience slower speeds.
Around 90% of homes in the island are less than
4Km from their exchange, so will receive a 2Mb service. However
Cable & Wireless is also applying for permission to install new
broadband exchange equipment in roadside cabinets at various points
around the island.
This will initially bring all homes within the
4Km limit, and eventually within 2.5Km, to enable all island
households to access the faster services.
Frequently asked
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