Connectivity / Shetland parliamentarians announce summit on telecommunications resilience
TELECOMMUNICATION providers, governments and the regulator Ofcom have all been invited to a resilience summit in Lerwick in a bid to improve the isles connectivity.
It comes as hundreds of islanders continue without broadband services after the Faroese owned SHEFA-2 telecommunications cable was damaged for the second time this year, early this month.
Isles MP Alistair Carmichael and local MSP Beatrice Wishart have announced plans for the summit, which will be held at Islesburgh Community Centre on 21 November.
It will include a private roundtable discussion will all parties, including representatives from the UK and the Scottish governments and as many service providers as are willing to attend.
This will be followed by an open public meeting at the same venue, starting at 1pm.
Currently customers of Vodafone, Sky and TalkTalk are without broadband access as traffic from these companies is not being re-routed on the SHEFA-2 subsea cable.
Many islanders have since reported problems being released from existing contracts and are also experiencing long waiting times for signed up with new providers.
Carmichael said: “This summit is about demanding basic accountability to our communities from internet providers and from the regulator Ofcom.
“Telecoms resilience is not a luxury – in 2025 it should be considered a basic requirement. It is what is expected in any major city, so we ought to be able to expect it here in the isles as well.
“After the first cable break in the summer I challenged telecommunications providers to improve their service and their responsiveness. Some progress has been made but the fallout from this month’s disruption makes it perfectly clear just how much further there still is to go.
“The Scottish and UK governments have their part to play as well and we have the right to expect them to send representatives.
“When the summit is held next month islanders will be able to see very clearly who has made the effort to turn up and respond to local concerns – and who has not.”
Wishart added: “In the first instance it is for the telecoms providers to respond to disruption and support people affected. In the longer term we need to see the government and the regulator Ofcom take resilience more seriously and force companies to have better backup systems.
“These are precisely the points that we are going to hammer home with all parties at the summit next month. Shetlanders deserve better answers than we have had so far.”
‘Complex’ cable repairs likely to take two weeks, Vodafone tells customers
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