Connectivity / ‘It’s not a capacity issue; it’s an issue of cost’ – resilience forum the start of a long process to improve connectivity
A MEETING looking at improving telecom resilience in the isles has been described as a first step in the right direction – although no tangible results have so far emerged from it.
Shetland’s Lib Dem politicians Alistair Carmichael and Beatrice Wishart invited internet service providers, government representatives, the regulator Ofcom as well as the owners of the Faroese Shefa-2 cable for the inaugural Northern Isles Resilience Forum.
Photo: Shetland News
It followed three lengthy broadband outages on the Shefa-2 cable in as many years which left hundreds of Shetland residents without connection; two this year, including in October, in addition to an incident in the autumn of 2022.
Speaking after a two-hour meeting at the Islesburgh Community Centre on Friday, Northern Isles MP Alistair Carmichael described the exercise as “worthwhile” and “the start of a process”.
“I don’t want anyone thinking ‘that’s it, we went to Shetland, we sat in a room for two hours, and we now can forget all about it’,” he said.
“Experience tells me that we have to stay on the case and if necessary, will have to bring them back.”
During the private meeting, which was followed by a public session attended by around 70 people, it was confirmed that BT/Openreach’s long awaited subsea cable, part of the government funded R100 programme, was now due to become operational in 2026/27.
Vodafone, meanwhile, re-iterated its earlier commitment to investigate the laying of its own cable, with an announcement with more details due soon.
The company is one of the many service providers exposed as without additional resilience built into the network that serves the isles.
Once the Shefa-2 cable sustained damage in early October, Vodafone had no way of re-routing traffic leaving customers without service for a total of 26 days.
Customers of Sky, TalkTalk and a number of smaller providers were in the same boat.
The Faroese owners of the two subsea cables connecting Shetland to the outside world however confirmed that there is sufficient capacity on the company’s infrastructure for all of its customers to provide additional resilience.
“It’s not a capacity issue, it’s an issue of cost,” chair of Shefa P/F, Kristian Davidson told Shetland News.
The company also revealed that generally the damage to its cables is caused by fishing vessels that have their automatic identification signal (AIS) switched off.
And most these vessels are not foreign registered or Russian as has been occasionally speculated.
The company’s managing director Pall Vesturbu explained that the owners of vessels responsible for damaging subsea cables are liable to pay for the repairs.
And he revealed that he had to use Freedom of Information legislation to obtain the necessary information about vessel movements from Scottish Government agency Marine Scotland. “
There is little protection of cables in the UK by law,” Vesterbu added. “The law states if a vessel is causing damage to a cable it should pay for the repair, but if the AIS is turned off it is very difficult to pursue.
“In other countries such as Denmark there are laws that vessel should not get closer than quarter of a mile to subsea cables. Vessels are also forced to have the AIS turned on.”
Repairs to the cable have in the past cost anything between £400,000 and £800,000, he said.
Meanwhile, James Waring, VodafoneThree’s government affairs manager, said the company had already began to investigate improving the resilience of its services in Shetland prior to the most recent outage.
“We announced in June our own feasibility study into building our own subsea cable from mainland Scotland to Shetland,” Waring said. “Another announcement with regards to that will be made in due course.
“We are also looking into getting additional R100 cable which hopefully will be delivered next year, which will give us a more diverse range of options.”
He added that since the October incident VodafoneThree has been in discussions with some of those around the table today, with a view to bring greater resilience.
He was however unable to give details of what those talks entailed, apart from: “Buying more capacity on the Shefa-2 cable was one of the options that is being explored.
“There is a cost issue, and all decisions have to made based on commercial considerations.”
Waring added: “The service we provide to our customers is of paramount importance; we take our customers care incredibly seriously.
“We thank Alistair [Carmichael] and his team who have done a sterling job in connecting us with some of our customers directly, and have been able to offer them the compensation they are entitled to, and in certain cases we also made gestures of goodwill on top of that.”
Setting out the existing regularly framework, Ofcom’s regulatory affairs manager Ross Hamilton said: “The principle here is that we have clear guidance in place for communications providers as to what resilience they should have in place to avoid single points of failure in their communication networks.
“We do not have the power to specify or stipulate how communication providers do that or structure their networks; we just give guidance.
“Within that it is important that the communication providers that have been here today take lessons from what the event has been about and try to work on what other resilience could be brought in.”
Hamilton agreed that the key word in Ofcom’s position was ‘guidance’.
He said the regulator had to work within the legislative framework that has been put in place by government, and when asked whether there was a case for strengthening that legislative framework he added that it was not for him to say.
Meanwhile, Scottish Government minister for business and employment Richard Lochhead highlight that the resilience of communication networks was a reserved matter to Westminster.
“Shetland deserves the same reliability for modern day communication as any other part of the country, given how important it is to everyday lives,” he said.
“Whilst resilience and protection of critical infrastructure like telecommunication is reserved to the UK Government, clearly the Scottish Government has stepped in in recent years through various programmes like the current R100 to roll out fast broadband and also fund new subsea cables to the islands.”
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.
