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Isle of Man Broadband Overview

Manx Telecom is the incumbent operator on the Isle of Man and a wholly owned subsidiary of mmO2 Plc. The company offers fixed line and mobile telephony to UK customers as well as Internet services and is responsible for some 60,000 residential and business fixed line connections. Manx Telecom provides its ADSL services through its own ISP Manxnet and by acting as wholesaler to five local ISPs: Domicilium, Mannet, Wi-Manx and 2e2, MCB.net.

There is currently no cable network on the Isle of Man, but by end-2007, all Manx Telecom telephone exchanges were DSL-enabled. Manx Telecom connects some of its DSL customers to the network via remote equipment such as Ethernet and satellite, and SDSL services are currently available only to customers in Douglas, Castletown and Ramsey. The island itself has good connectivity served by a fibre-optic submarine cable to the UK with five fibre optic pairs. The Manx Government has recently tried to address the issue of rising bandwidth needs through the installation of an additional fibre-optic cable link to the mainland, operated jointly by the Manx Electricity Authority and the UK's National Grid.

Manx Telecom was the first telecommunications operator in Europe to launch a live 3G network, in December 2001. Four years later, in November 2005, Manx Telecom was again the first company in Europe to began offering an HSDPA (3.5G) based service. In May 2006, the Communications Commission of the Isle of Man issued two licences to Cable & Wireless and Wire 9 for running mobile telephony services on the Isle of Man. In Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, Cable & Wireless has invested over GBP 40 million in the improvement of communications and the delivery of a new generation of services through Sure. Sure, the new brand subsidiary of C&W, launched its mobile network in the Isle of Man in 2007.