Jersey Telecom has confirmed that a specialist cable repair ship is now in place over the break in one of the three submarine fibre optic cables that connect Jersey to the UK and that were cut by a ship’s anchor on Monday evening.
In a statement, JT, a major provider of telephone and internet services to the Channel Islands, which are home to a number of i-gaming businesses, said it hoped one of the cables will be repaired “by early next week dependent on the weather and extent of the damage.”
A second ship has left France to repair the second cable with the third to be repaired after that, JT said.
Daragh McDermott, director of corporate affairs for JT, said: “I am pleased to say that so far disruption has been kept to an absolute minimum and I would especially like to thank our engineering teams, who have been working around the clock to keep the islands connected via our cable link with France, and our customers for their understanding.
“Thanks to the actions taken since the cables were cut, we have capacity in place to manage demand, although we have obviously lost spare capacity should further issues arise.
“We have monitored our network closely and have seen little impact on customer services - although there may be some disruption at peak times,” said McDermott.
“We have been able to move quickly to address this unpredecented issue partly because of assistance from [telecommunications service provider] Sure, and I would like to thank them for that important support. We will continue to keep customers up-to-date with what is an extremely challenging emergency engineering operation at sea.”
