Islanders without internet for 'up to three weeks' because of damaged cable

Residents and businesses on Shetland have been without broadband since Friday, October 3, when connection went down for customers during Storm Amy.

Bank machines have reportedly been down and the island’s Sumburgh airport is said to have lost one and half day’s flying over the disruption.

Customers affected include those with Vodafone, TalkTalk and Sky, while those using BT seem largely unaffected.

The cable, known as the Shefa-2 cable, was damaged in rough seas in shallow waters about a mile off the coast of Orkney.

The stormy weather saw several other islands lose internet connection due to subsea cable damage, including Tiree and Orkney.

While it remains unclear what exactly caused the damage this month to Shefa-2, which is owned by Faroese Telecom, islanders have been told it could be another two weeks until the the issue is resolved.

A vessel is reportedly on its way from France to deal with the damage which telecoms providers have described as “complex.”

The outage comes just months after the same cable was damaged in the summer causing a communication blackout across the islands. It is understood the cause was a mainland-registered scallop dredger fishing “dark”, according to official documents seen by The Shetland Times.

The recent disruption has driven some Shetlanders to quit internet providers after being told it could be another fortnight before service is restored.

One resident in Lerwick, Shetland’s capital, told The Scotsman: “A lot of people are switching providers.

“My niece has had no WiFi, no internet, nothing, for a week.

“That’s okay but she’s now been told it could be another two weeks before anything is sorted.

“For businesses this isn’t great.”

A staff member at Shetland Library said: “We haven’t been affected by the damage this time, but you can tell people have been because we have public access computers here at the library and people have been coming in to use them more since the internet has been down.”

Maree Hay, who manages Polycrub HQ in Ollaberry, a settlement to the west of mainland Shetland, said: “We’re on 4G EE at the office and I’m with BT and home, so all systems go.

“It’s those with Vodafone and Sky broadband that have lost connection as there's no resilience in their comms. I hear, anecdotally, that folk here are leaving both these providers in droves as it’s the second time in three months that folk have lost services.”

A consultation on the ferry service between Scotland’s mainland and the northern isles had to be extended due to the internet disruption as some residents were not able to submit their responses.

The survey asks for views on the new contract for the NorthLink service which is periodically put out to contract for operators to bid to run the service on behalf of Transport Scotland using the Scottish Government-owned vessels.

Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Beatrice Wishart previously asked ministers in July to provide paper copies due to then ongoing mobile broadband signal and internet outages.

A Transport Scotland spokesperson confirmed the consultation, which has received “a healthy number of responses”, has been extended by another week with responses due in by October 20.

Several residents in Lerwick affected by the recent outage said they would not be so annoyed if 4G in the town was reliable as a backup.

Shetlanders have been dealing with “shockingly bad” signal in the town for years, despite the place being the most populated area of the northern archipelago.

Several reasons have been given for the ongoing problem, including previous subsea cable damage caused by a trawler boat in 2023, to limited bandwidth to the problem being exacerbated by large cruise ships docking in the harbour with passengers and crew increasing the number of users on the network.