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News / BT in the hot seat

DIRECTOR of BT Scotland, Brendan Dick, will be in Shetland on Thursday, to explain his company’s plans to improve broadband facilities in the isles.

Over recent weeks, broadband services across Shetland were again plagued by outages and slow connection speeds.

Mr Dick will answer questions at the second northern isles digital forum, organised by Shetland and Orkney MP Alistair Carmichael.

The LibDem politician said he would encourage anyone with an interest in the issue to come along to the Islesburgh Community centre at 12.30 to voice their concern.

 “The potential benefits of broadband internet and digital technologies in places like Shetland are enormous. However, for many years local services have been unreliable and patchy at times.

“This impacts on most of us in one way or another, not least those businesses that are missing out on opportunities and potential new markets as a result of poor quality digital links.

“Problems on the mainland or even the weather have caused outages in the past and serious questions need to be asked over how we can ensure that Shetland gets a more robust and consistent internet service.

BT is the key player in our local internet market and this second meeting of the forum will give people the opportunity to raise these concerns with senior management from the company as well as local engineers who will have a better understanding of the situation on the ground here,” he said.

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