17 BT Fibre Broadband FTTC Cabinets Go LIVE on the Shetland Islands

Residents of the remote Shetland Islands community will be pleased to learn that the first 17 street cabinets (serving 4,000 premises) equipped with BT’s up to 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) broadband technology have gone live today. The work forms part of the wider £410m Digital Scotland partnership.

The new link stems from an earlier project (here) that will effectively replace the islands old Microwave wireless connection with a new fibre optic cable, which connects via the undersea SHEFA-2 cable that links the Faroe Islands with mainland Scotland (UK).

It is however important to mention that Shetland Telecom played a big part in helping to bring the fibre optic link to the islands in the first place, which BT are understood to be leasing. If memory serves then BT are also buying capacity from Shetland to Faroe and back to UK on Farice1 for resiliency and will use Shetland Telecom’s fibre to give them a route from Lerwick to Maywick.

Apparently the official opening ceremony for the new on-land side of the network was held at one of BT’s street cabinets in Böd of Gremista in Lerwick, which is currently being described as Scotland’s “most northerly fibre broadband cabinet“. The other cabinets can be found in Quarff and Sumburgh, with more on the way.

Stuart Robertson, Director of Digital Highlands and Islands, said:

“This first phase of roll-out on the Shetland Islands is opening up fibre based services to one in three homes and businesses in one swoop. It’s a great start.

The Shetland Islands have links across the world in leading sectors including energy, creative industries, tourism and food and drink. Access to better broadband can open up opportunities for business growth across all these sectors, and at home makes for more flexibility in every day life.

Having now pushed through almost all of Shetland’s existing cabinets our next steps are to build the new networks and cabinets needed to reach customers currently connected directly to their exchanges.”

The next phase of work on Shetland will start in the second half of 2015 and this will connect more people in Sumburgh, Cunningsburgh and Lerwick, it will also take services out to a number of new communities including Voe, Symbister, Brae, Scalloway and Sandwick.