Community / Frustration up north as some left without mobile signal for days
A LOSS of mobile signal in northern parts of Shetland since the weekend is causing havoc with some people’s communications.
One family told Shetland News that for them it has meant they have missed important correspondence about work hours, benefits and bank charges.
A spokesperson for O2 said the issue results from a technical problem with a mast, with engineers “working as quickly as possible to fully restore customers’ services”.
It is also affecting coverage from other networks, such as Vodafone.
The outage was reported on Saturday and as of Tuesday night many in areas such as Yell, Unst and parts of the North Mainland were still without phone signal.
This is proving a particular problem for those without a landline and anyone without broadband, such as those who rely on 4G mobile data for internet.
One woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said her household relies on their Vodafone signal as they “can’t get fibre [broadband] yet and don’t have a landline”.
She said she had to sit outside the local school to access the SIC guest internet to get in touch with Vodafone.
“They were very apologetic but totally clueless and unconcerned as to the problems caused by lack of signal,” the woman said.
She added that one member of the family had a message regarding Universal Credit last Friday but they cannot open it. “Even if he connects through SIC guest, as he needs two step verification to sign in, which means a text message,” she explained.
The woman added that another family member has a job where he receives a WhatsApp message in the morning to tell him when to show up at work, but without signal this is proving difficult.
She also said the problems meant she was late in seeing a message from her bank late regarding an arranged overdraft and how there was a risk of charges being imposed.
On Monday some members of the household bought EE digital SIMs – “but even with that, we can’t phone or receive calls or texts, so all two step verification fails”.
“We have no close neighbours and none of our friends have landlines,” the woman said.
“What is most frustrating, is the lack of concern shown by Vodafone and no timeline as to when it will be fixed.”
She said she asked Vodafone about compensation, but they said any payment would be based off of “usual usage” – and would not take into account “bank charges, lost work hours, purchase costs of e-sims and possible loss of income from universal credit”.
Regarding the issues affecting signal, a spokesperson for Vodafone said: “We’re sorry to our customers who are affected by issues with their services.
“Our infrastructure partner is aware of the network issue in the area and is working hard to restore services.
“We encourage our customers to sign up to network checker to receive status updates regarding network issues.”
The Yell for Cancer Support SCIO charity shop also warned that it may not be able to take card payments when it opens on Thursday if there is still no signal by then.
It is understood the mast problem relates to an O2 hosted site.
An O2 spokesperson said: “We apologise to customers in the Brae and Yell areas who may be experiencing intermittent issues with their services.
“Our engineers are aware of the problem and working as quickly as possible to fully restore customers’ services.
“We recommend customers ensure they have Wi-Fi calling enabled on their device as it will allow them to make and receive calls and text messages whilst connected to a broadband network.”
They added that calls to 999 and 111 can be connected to any available network regardless of an individual’s mobile provider.
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