Jersey Telecom trial 4G mobile broadband service

The 4G mobile internet service would use space made available from digital switchover

Jersey Telecom has trialled a next generation mobile broadband service for the first time in the island.

The digital Switchover made space available for super fast mobile internet and now Jersey Telecom is hoping to offer it.

Graeme Miller, Jersey Telecom CEO said 4G mobile broadband would be closer in speed to what people use at home.

As the number of smartphone users increased the current network would start to feel the strain, he added.

'Data tsunami'

He said: "I think it is necessary because the number of users of smartphones will be four times bigger in say five years time than it is today.

"The amount of usage is also going up dramatically.

"If you think we have got four or five times as many usage, four or five times as much data per user, it is almost a data tsunami, people will be consuming 25 times as much data as they are today."

More than a quarter of islanders already had a smartphone, he added.

He said: "Within a small number of years we expect almost everyone on the island who has a mobile phone to have a smartphone and it [broadband service] is for them."

Neil Baker from Alcatel-Lucent, the company behind the 4G technology, said: "We believe video will drive this more and more.

"Whether it is video conferencing, iPlayer, YouTube or catch-up TV, we believe video will drive that take-up."

But the roll-out of super fast mobile broadband still relies on the French government turning off analogue television and on the island's mobile providers installing the technology.

Jersey Telecom said if it did come to Jersey it would not be until about 2013.