Broadband Disrupted to Shetland After Subsea Fibre Cables Break UPDATE

Homes and businesses on Shetland, which is a remote subarctic archipelago that resides some way north of Scotland, have suffered two breakages to different parts of their main SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) submarine (subsea) fibre optic cable. As a result, a lot of broadband and phone connections on the island are being disrupted.

The cable is the same one installed on land by Shetland Telecom some years ago, which is supplied by a submarine fibre that connects via the undersea SHEFA-2 line. The cable actually reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes North West up to the Faroe Islands and another cable that runs south towards Orkney and the Scottish Mainland.

The situation technically started last week after the link between Shetland and Faroe was broken. The cause of that break has not yet been ascertained, although the most likely reason tends to be ships dragging their anchors across the cable or fishing trawlers dragging large nets in the same way (fishing fleets usually know where the cables run).

However, the disruption from that first break was limited as the second link south was still running, but all that changed yesterday morning after the southern cable link to Orkney also suffered a break. As a result, there has been a much more significant disruption to island connectivity, although some broadband and phone lines are still functional.

An Openreach spokesperson said (Shetland News):

“Due to a break in a third-party subsea cable connecting Shetland with the Scottish mainland, some phone, broadband and mobile services are affected.

Engineers are working to divert services via other routes as soon as possible and we’ll provide further updates. Our external subsea provider is also looking to restore their link quickly.

Anyone who needs to call 999 should try their landline or their mobile, even if they don’t have signal from their own mobile provider. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.”

A cable repair ship was already busy repairing the first break on the north-west subsea link and is due to finish soon (we’re told the current expectation is Saturday), at which point it’s likely that this ship could be re-tasked to fix the southern break. Such breaks can sometimes take weeks to complete, but that’s partly due to the delay in arranging for a cable repair ship to be dispatched, which may not be such an issue this time.

We should add that the Scottish Government‘s £35m subsea fibre project with Openreach (BT) and Global Marine (here), which aims to connect 15 remote islands around northern Scotland via 16 new fibre optic cable links, will also include the deployment of an additional subsea link between Shetland and Orkney (this is not yet live).

UPDATE 24th Oct 2022

Shetland Telecom’s Marvin Smith has kindly issued a quick update: “Shefa2 between Shetland and Faroe has been repaired. The cable ship is now heading for Faroe to pick up more cable before returning to repair the cable between Shetland and the Mainland. The vessel is estimated to be on site Tuesday.”

The suggestion is that one of the two breaks appears likely to be attributable to a fishing trawler.