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About 500 homes in Jersey will be given access to fibre optic broadband at no cost as part of a trial of the new network.

The States of Jersey invested £19m in JTs island-wide fibre optic network which it expects to be available to the .

The trial will start on 3 January at La Moye, La Rocque and Fauvic and will last for three months.

The trial is open to customers of all telecom operators in Jersey.

A JT spokesperson said it was a trial of the network and so JT, Sure and Newtel would be writing to their customers in that area offering them the chance to trial fibre optic broadband.

JT say speeds will vary between 40Mbps and 1Gbps during the trial.

People trying the service will be expected to give detailed feedback covering everything from installation to the experience of having faster broadband.

JT said it would use the feedback to help shape the final product it offers to the public when the service is launched.

The service will be available to all homes in the island by 2016, but the first homes will have access to the service by 2012, with most being switched to fibre optic broadband by 2013.

Graeme Millar, chief executive of JT, said: "Clearly it takes time to replace the island-wide copper cable network, and we nee to do that in stages to minimise disruption and gain appropriate access to the 42,000 homes. "

Mr Millar said the switchover to a fibre optic network enabling broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps would make it "the fastest for a residential network in the western world".