Bad Weather Delays Fix for Broken Shetland Subsea Fibre Cable Until Tuesday

Bad weather means customers of broadband and mobile providers Vodafone, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk on Shetland, which is a remote UK subarctic archipelago that resides north of the Scottish mainland, will have to wait until Tuesday until repair ship Cable Vigilance can complete its fix of the recently broken SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) subsea cable.

The SHEFA-2 cable reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes north up to the Faroe Islands and another that runs south to connect Orkney and the Scottish Mainland. The damage, which occurred on 3rd October 2025 during Storm Amy (here), came only a few short months after a fishing vessel struck the same cable (here and here). But this time the cable was broken around 1.5km off the coast of Orkney on a “section that has previously experienced problems caused by natural forces (tides/current).”

Such breaks typically take a few weeks to fully repair, depending upon the weather, damage, location and availability of repair ships. The last break was repaired within less than two weeks, but this one was expected to take a little longer because the damage is in shallow water – close to shore – and required a new cable landing at the Ayre of Cara (Orkney).

According to Shetland Telecom, which alongside BT has not been impacted by the damaged subsea fibre (they both have better redundancy), “most of the preparatory work is now complete and the vessel is standing by to begin the main repair once weather conditions allow“. The main repair operation is now expected to take place during early Tuesday, “when sea conditions are expected to improve“.

Depending on weather and sea conditions, full restoration of the cable connection is now expected by Tuesday evening (it was previously due for completion yesterday).