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2.14 Deputy S. Power of the Minister for Treasury and Resources regarding the number of houses involved in the test or pilot scheme in the La Moye area for Gigabit Jersey:
Sticking to my Gigabit theme, would the Minister confirm the number of houses that were involved in the pilot scheme that was conducted recently in the La Moye area for Gigabit Jersey?
Senator P.F.C. Ozouf (The Minister for Treasury and Resources):
The purpose of the trial was to help J.T. get real life experience of rolling out the fibre infrastructure and testing alternative technology from a short list of suppliers. This experience and this rollout was a crucial part of the independent board's decision-making process and resulted in the £12 million contract to Cisco Systems who are providing the equipment, which sits at the core of the network, as opposed to the contractor that we were talking about earlier that is rolling out the fibre. This will be the dual partnership that will roll out fibre optic for every home in Jersey. J.T. advised that, of the total number of houses connected in La Moye, 63 provided some extremely useful feedback from that experience and that trial. The others are being successfully applied to part of the trial that had been connected and will benefit from the same 2-month free upgrade to their bandwidth, which the other trial has benefited from.
- Deputy S. Power:
The Minister referred to Jersey Telecom's real life experience in dealing with feedback from telephone customers in La Moye and I would suggest to the Minister that the real life experience has been a very poor internet speed and very poor access in the La Moye area for as long as I can remember. Does the Minister have a technical reason for what has been the cause of these poor internet access and speeds in the La Moye area?
Senator P.F.C. Ozouf :
I am not the Managing Director or the Technical Director of J.T. but obviously I know quite a lot about it because, of course, we have pored over the detail. I hope the Deputy will welcome the fact that the investment that J.T. was making I think that we must remember that J.T. were going to make £30 million worth of investment in speeding up the copper network, of which there were pockets in the Island that had very poor speeds, La Moye being one of them, I think some areas of St. Clement being another, and St. Martin being another. We were going to do the "souped-up" copper version. That is what J.T. were doing. In discussion with the board, we went further to do the ubiquitous fibre optic rollout for the whole of the Island, which I think is going to be regarded in future as absolutely groundbreaking for the Island. La Moye, because of the poor internet speed, was put as the first area to deal with in terms of speeding up internet. I hope it brought pleasure to the constituency representative. He did not lobby for it but it has happened and I hope his constituents are very happy.
- Deputy S. Power:
This is my final question and I thank the Minister for his technical knowledge of the La Moye area. It is more than mine is, I have to say. Has the Minister been given an indication from J.T. as to when this will finally be accomplished in that area?
Senator P.F.C. Ozouf :
I understand that an amazing because of the difficulties in La Moye, I understand that 1,493 homes applied, and 500 were accepted on the initial trial. There were originally 131 but 292 have now been connected and there is going to be a further 500 added in July, August and September, an average of 1,000 a month. So La Moye is going to be one of the first areas in the Island to get exciting, reliable and good value fibre optic services which the regulator will, of course, have a view on the pricing of.