Openreach hopeful people will be ‘reconnected starting from this evening’

OPENREACH says it is expecting broadband internet which has been disrupted in Shetland following subsea cable damage more than three weeks ago will be “back to normal throughout this evening and overnight”.

It comes after the fault on the SHEFA-2 cable near to Orkney was fixed on Tuesday evening.

Despite the repair being completed by its owner Faroese Telecom, those affected by the fault had their hopes dashed last night when their broadband service did not go live again.

There remains confusion over when will be back to normal, with customers of some providers being told different dates as to when their broadband might be back on.

When contacted by Shetland News, a spokesperson for digital infrastructure company Openreach said this morning (Wednesday) that “the network doesn’t just switch back on the minute the cable is reconnected”.

“There’s a little of bit of work that needs to be done today and some thorough testing to make sure everything returns as it should be,” they added.

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“Engineers are on the island today doing this and we’re expecting everything to be back to normal throughout this evening and overnight.”

When asked if this means people affected by the disruption will see their service resume this evening or overnight, the spokesperson added that “as long as everything goes to plan, we’re hopeful that people will reconnected starting from this evening”.

It was back on Friday 3 October when customers of providers such as Vodafone, Sky, TalkTalk and Utility Warehouse lost broadband following the damage to cable in shallow waters.

It echoed similar disruption in July and August when a different part of the cable network was damaged by a fishing vessel.

Some other providers, such as BT, are unaffected as they can access back-up cable.