Broadband Outages on Shetland After Second Subsea Fibre Break in 3 Months

Customers of ISP Sky Broadband, Vodafone and possibly others on Shetland, which is a remote UK subarctic archipelago that resides north of the Scottish mainland, started suffering from a loss of internet connectivity yesterday after the main SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) subsea fibre optic cable suffered damage on Friday; the second time in 3 months.

Faroese Telecom’s SHEFA-2 cable reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes North West up to the Faroe Islands and another cable that runs south to connect Orkney and the Scottish Mainland. In addition, BT recently deployed an additional subsea fibre link between Shetland and Orkney as part of the ongoing R100 project, although this one isn’t fully live yet and may not be utilised by every operator.

According to an update from Shetland Telecom, which has not been impacted by the incident, the latest damage occurred around 1.5km off the coast of Orkney on a “section that has previously experienced problems caused by natural forces (tides/current),” although the actual cause has not yet been determined. The previous break on 26th July 2025 was caused by a fishing vessel (here and here), which reported the damage to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) a day later.

“Because the damage is close to shore, certain preparations will need to be made in Orkney before repairs can commence,” said a spokesperson for Shetland Telecom. Such breaks can sometimes take several weeks to fully repair, which is partly due to the time it takes to arrange a cable repair ship to be dispatched, as well as uncertainty around the scale of damage and weather. The last break was repaired within a couple of weeks.

Local MP Alistair Carmichael said:

“It is still unclear what the extent of communications disruption is today, let alone the cause. I have contacted the various telecommunications companies operating in the isles to understand better what sort of issues are at play and who is affected.

We have to hope that the disruption will be minimal and short-lived. Even so, this will be a good test of whether the promises of more responsive communications from telecoms providers following the problems in the summer will be borne out in reality.”

Alcatel Submarine Networks have already been instructed to carry out the repair. The company operates seven state-of-the-art vessels – Ile de Sein, Ile de Batz, Ile de Bréhat, Ile d’Aix, Ile d’Yeu, Ile d’Ouessant, and Ile de Molène – although most of these are currently tasked with work on the other side of the world. The two “closest” ships are Ile d’Ouessant (currently off the west coast of Africa) and Ile de Bréhat in the Mediterranean, but they might alternatively pull in one from the Caribbean.

In terms of alternative options, residents on Shetland can now purchase packages via Starlink’s LEO satellite broadband network, which may be a useful alternative for redundancy. However, Vodafone (VodafoneThree) did recently announce that they had begun a new “feasibility study”, which will explore the possibility and cost of deploying a new subsea fibre optic cable to help boost broadband and mobile connectivity on the Shetland Islands and boost resilience (here).