Fishing vessel believed to have damaged subsea cable
A FISHING vessel is believed to have damaged the Shefa-2 subsea cable over the weekend, leaving hundreds of people in Shetland and Orkney without internet.
The owner of the vessel reported the damage to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency on Sunday, saying they believed they had affected the Shefa-2 cable while at sea off the coast of Orkney.
Shefa, which owns the fibre optic cable, said it believed the damage was caused by a fishing vessel – but said it had not confirmed this as yet.
The repair may only be completed by Sunday or Monday, Shefa managing director Páll Højgaard Vesturbú told Shetland News on Monday.
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.
Both MP Alistair Carmichael and MSP Beatrice Wishart have raised issues with the vulnerability of Shetland’s connections, with Wishart calling for an immediate explanation for the outage.
Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone customers are thought to have been the worst affected by the outage.
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