News / MSP calls for cable damage explanation as wait for internet could stretch into next week
HUNDREDS of customers may have to wait until the start of next week for their internet to return after a subsea cable was damaged over the weekend.
The Shefa-2 fibre optic cable was damaged at around 3am on Saturday morning, leaving many Sky, Vodafone and TalkTalk customers without broadband.
Shefa managing director Páll Højgaard Vesturbú told Shetland News the repair may only be completed by Sunday or Monday – provided weather conditions allow the work to go ahead.
The cable was damaged around nine kilometres off the coast of Orkney in the early hours of Saturday, with the cause of the damage still unknown.
Vesturbú said on Saturday that they expected a repair vessel to be on site by the middle of the week, and added they were working to restore the lost connections via an alternative route.
The disruption has caused a number of issues for Shetland businesses, and it comes on the back of people in the North Isles and the North Mainland also losing mobile signal and 4G last week.
MP Alistair Carmichael said this outage was not as “catastrophic” as previous incidents, but showed “how vulnerable these connections are”.
“We cannot wait for the next serious disruption to improve our resilience,” he said.
“Every part of the country should have the same expectation of resilient communications and energy links, but if that were enough of a reason for the government to take this seriously, Shetland’s key strategic location surely is.
“It has been apparent to me from the calls and emails to my office that the various service providers who use this cable have different levels of resilience in the event of this sort of outage.
“It also has to be said that many of them simply are not set up to provide reliable customer service.
“When lessons are to be learned from this that has to be at the top of the list.”
Shetland MSP Beatrice Wishart said the incident “once again shows the fragility of Shetland’s digital connectivity”.
“We urgently need full restoration of services and repair as well as an explanation of what caused the issue,” Wishart said.
“This will have been a double whammy for residents in the North Isles who have been without mobile connectivity for well over a week.
“The previous incident in October 2022 was a wake-up call for preparedness and resilience and that will have played a role in the response this time.
“The UK and Scottish Governments should take this matter extremely seriously and look at additional ways to ensure secure connectivity to the Northern Isles.”
Openreach, which maintains the UK’s broadband network, said on Sunday the impact was “more limited than initially thought”, with hundreds instead of thousands of customers being disrupted.
A company spokesperson said they would continue to work hard to resolve and repair the issue.
Companies like Vodafone and Sky can pay for additional resilience for their customers and can provide alternative temporary solutions for connectivity, such as mobile dongles.
One Vodafone broadband customer told Shetland News that they had been advised the estimated completion time for the repair was 7pm on Friday 1 August.
The company also offered them expanded data on their mobile phone contract, which was also with Vodafone.
It comes less than three years after the same cable was previously damaged by a fishing vessel, leaving large numbers of Shetland homes and businesses without connectivity and prompting the police to declare a major incident.
Become a member of Shetland News
Shetland News is asking its readers to consider paying for membership to get additional perks:
- Removal of third-party ads;
- Bookmark posts to read later;
- Exclusive curated weekly newsletter;
- Hide membership messages;
- Comments open for discussion.
If you appreciate what we do and feel strongly about impartial local journalism, then please become a member of Shetland News by either making a single payment, or setting up a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
Already a member? Sign in to hide this message.
