First of two cable faults repaired

THE FIRST of the two faults in the Faroese Shefa-2 subsea cable has now been repaired.

Shetland was largely cut off from the outside world for a period of time on Thursday when the already damaged cable was hit for a second time, near Orkney.

Some connectivity provided by Shetland Telecom was quickly restored in the early hours of Thursday morning, but it took until the afternoon for most services provided by BT to be restored.

It was initially thought the outage could last for two days.

Repair work at the damaged cable section south of the isles is scheduled to take place over coming days.

A spokesperson for BT Group said late on Saturday night that their telecommunication services had remained stable since a temporary solution had been put in place.

“Following the restoration of all broadband and mobile services to Shetland on Thursday afternoon, Faroese Telecom has confirmed today (Saturday) that their subsea cable connecting Shetland with the Faroe Islands has been successfully repaired,” the spokesperson said.

“All services have remained stable since Thursday afternoon when engineers applied a temporary solution to reconnect Shetland to our network.”

Shetland area commander chief inspector Stuart Clemson added on Sunday that police officers who had been drafted in to ensure the public had access to emergency services during the outage will be withdrawn over coming days

“Thanks to a strong response from partners we were able to make sure the public had access to emergency services while engineers worked to restore communications,” he said.

“This is a prime example of how we work together, locally and nationally to make sure that incidents like these have as little impact as possible.

“Such a speedy response from all helped significantly reduce a serious situation developing for our communities and I would like to pay tribute to everyone involved.”