Shetland connects to Faroese fibre optic cable

SHETLAND Telecom completed a milestone in connecting the isles to superfast broadband, when the company’s network was finally connected to the Faroese SHEFA2 fibre optic.

The company, created by the local council, aims to have 90 per cent of the islands’ population within reach of broadband service faster than 24 Mbps, by 2016.

Announcing that the connection was finally made, project manager Marvin Smith said on Facebook:“Delighted to announce that we are now connected to Faroese Telecom’s SHEFA2 fibre optic cable. We should be fully operational in the next couple of weeks.”

The momentous event took place in the back of a yellow council van, on Friday.

On Monday Mr Smith added: “We are just waiting for some hardware, which should be here this week, before we can start actually using the link.

“We expect to transfer customers in Vidlin and Fetlar over to the new backhaul link before the end of April after a period of testing the link.

“The link gives us resilient (two routes) fibre optic connections to London for the first time.”