Sure, a trading brand of

Batelco Bahrain Telecommunication Company BSC, trading as Batelco (), is the principal telecommunications company in Bahrain. The company's headquarters are in Bahrain and the company is listed on the Bahrain Bourse. The Chairman of the Board is Abdu ...

, is a

telecommunications company A telecommunications company is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many t ...

in the

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

Jersey Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...

Guernsey Guernsey ( ; Guernésiais: ''Guernési''; ) is the second-largest island in the Channel Islands, located west of the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy. It is the largest island in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes five other inhabited isl ...

, the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...

St. Helena Saint Helena (, ) is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km ...

Ascension Island Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overs ...

, and the

British Indian Ocean Territory The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is an British Overseas Territories, Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chago ...

. Sure is the largest tri-island mobile operator across the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are divided into two Crown Dependencies: the Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey, which is the largest of the islands; and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, ...

and Isle of Man. The international division of

Cable & Wireless plc Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to BT Group, British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications). The company l ...

bought Guernsey Telecoms from the

States of Guernsey The States of Guernsey (), officially the States of Deliberation and sometimes referred to as the Government of Guernsey, is the parliament and government of the British Crown dependency of Guernsey. Some laws and ordinances approved by the ...

in 2002, rebranding as Sure in July 2007. Cable & Wireless opened an office in Jersey in 2004, offering corporate telecoms products. It launched the Sure brand along with mobile services in September 2006. In the same year the company launched fixed line products (FirstDial Home and Business, later re-branded as SureDial Home & Business). In July 2007 Sure launched mobile services in the Isle of Man. In 2008 the company secured a fixed licence and introduced fixed line products (SureDial Home & Business), as well as high speed mobile broadband utilising

HSDPA High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunic ...

. It launched fixed broadband services in the third quarter of 2009. Sure became part of

Cable & Wireless Communications Cable & Wireless Communications Ltd operating as C&W Communications is a telecommunications company which has operations in the Caribbean and Central America. It is owned by Liberty Latin America and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, US. ...

in 2010 following a corporate split of Cable & Wireless plc, and was purchased by Batelco Islands Limited in 2013. The company has the largest market share of mobile, landline and broadband customers in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which incorporates the islands of Guernsey, Herm, Alderney and Sark. Sure is regulated in the jurisdictions in which it operates.

History

Cable & Wireless first entered the Channel Islands market when it purchased Guernsey Telecoms (formerly the States Telecommunications Board) from the States of Guernsey. The service was founded on 17 June 1896 as the States Telephone Department to "establish, maintain and operate" an independent telephone system for the island which would have a maximum of 400 subscribers. Guernsey, together with Kingston-upon-Hull (see

KCOM Group KCOM Group (formerly known as Kingston Communications and latterly KC) is a UK communications and IT services provider. Its headquarters are in the city of Kingston upon Hull, and it serves local residents and businesses with Internet and telep ...

), was outside of the telecommunications monopoly which was created in the

British Islands The British Islands is a term within the law of the United Kingdom which refers collectively to the following four polities: * the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; * the Bailiwick of Guernsey (including the jurisdictio ...

in 1912 by the

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...

following its purchase of the

National Telephone Company The National Telephone Company (NTC) was a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British telephone company, which from 1881 to 1911 consolidated smaller local companies in the early years of telephone adoption. The British government natio ...

Limited. On 1 October 2001, following a decision by the States of Guernsey to privatise the telecoms industry, operations were transferred from the States of Guernsey Telecommunications Board to a new corporate structure called Guernsey Telecoms Ltd in preparation for privatisation. On 30 May 2002, the company was sold to Cable & Wireless. One of the first changes that islanders noticed was that the telephone kiosks, which were previously yellow, were repainted blue. Four months later on 30 September 2002, the company was rebranded as Cable and Wireless Guernsey, and following the expansion into Jersey and the Isle of Man, it was re-branded as Sure. On 3 June 2007, Sure launched in the Isle of Man where they offer business and residential mobile and broadband services using a mobile network that they wholly own and operate. Broadband is wholesale purchased from the Island's principal communications company,

Manx Telecom Manx Telecom Ltd. () is the primary provider of broadband and telecommunications on the Isle of Man. It is owned by Basalt Infrastructure Partners LLP. History Historically, the telephone system in the Isle of Man had been run as a monopoly ...

. Sure has permission to offer fixed-line telephone services across Manx Telecom's lines. In March 2010, Cable & Wireless split, and Sure became part of

which demerged from the business. Sure launched their own 16Mb broadband service in the Isle of Man on 1 November 2010 and on 1 September 2011 were the first telecoms company to take pre-orders for

VDSL2 Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber lin ...

broadband (supplied wholesale from Manx Telecom) capable of up to 40 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream. The service launched on 1 October 2011. In April 2013, Sure was sold to the

Bahrain Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it comprises a small archipelago of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island, which mak ...

telecommunications company,

which then adopted the new Sure International brand for its business services. In 2017, an independent review carried out by the '' Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities'' found that Sure had the fastest mobile network in the

, with average downloads speeds being twice as fast as their nearest competitor. In December 2020, it emerged that Sure Guernsey had, in 2018, provided the Israeli surveillance company Rayzone Group with access to the SS7 signaling system, thereby enabling it to track the location of any cellphone globally. In November 2024 Sure completed the Acquisition of

Airtel-Vodafone Airtel-Vodafone Limited is a mobile network operator located in Jersey and Guernsey (Channel Islands), and regulated by the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities. Until 2024, it was a joint venture between Bharti Airtel and Vo ...

Investment

Since 2002, Cable & Wireless has invested over £40 million in infrastructure, services and products in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The introduction of

mobile number portability Mobile number portability (MNP) enables mobile phone users to retain a mobile telephone number when changing the mobile network operator. Overview Mobile number portability (MNP) allows people to keep their phone numbers when switching to a ne ...

in the Channel Islands in December 2008 and in the Isle of Man in 2009 led to Sure re-launching all of its price plans to compete with the other operators serving the individual islands. Sure has international roaming agreements with 200 countries across the world. It allows customers to roam across the Channel Islands and Isle of Man without incurring roaming charges. In 2006 Sure completed the £6.5 million Project HUGO which saw two new fibre optic cables being brought ashore in Guernsey, directly connecting to the Cable & Wireless global infrastructure.

References

External links

Official website (Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man)Official website (Falkland Islands, St. Helena and Ascension Island)Official website (British Indian Ocean Territory)
{{Channel Islands Telecommunications companies established in 1896 1896 establishments in Guernsey Communications in the Isle of Man Mobile phone companies of the Isle of Man Telecommunications companies of Jersey Companies of Guernsey