Shetland Expecting Fix for Broken Subsea Fibre Cable to Occur Next Weekend
Homes and businesses on Shetland, which is a remote UK subarctic archipelago that resides north of the Scottish mainland, could see the full restoration of local broadband services by around next weekend. Connectivity was disrupted earlier this month after Storm Amy caused damage to the main SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) subsea fibre optic cable (here).
The SHEFA-2 cable reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes north west up to the Faroe Islands and another that runs south to connect Orkney and the Scottish Mainland. The damage, which came only a few short months after a fishing vessel struck the same cable (here and here), is understood to have occurred 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 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, the need for surveys and weather. The last break was repaired within a couple of weeks, but this one was expected to take a little longer because the damage is in shallow water – close to shore – and requires a new landing at Ayre of Cara (Orkney).
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The good news, according to Shetland Telecom, is that Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), which has been contracted to conduct the work, has now completed their surveys and confirmed the schedule for the repair. Repair ship Cable Vigilance, which s currently still docked in Calais (France), will depart late for the islands on Monday 20th October.
Preparations involving local (Orkney) workboats are then planned for Tuesday 21st, with Cable Vigilance due to arrive in Orkney on Thursday 23rd to begin cable recovery and jointing operations. The new shore-end section is planned to be landed on Saturday 25th, with full restoration anticipated later the same day. So, some good news for customers of Sky Broadband, Vodafone, TalkTalk and a few other network providers.
The catch is that this timetable remains subject to weather conditions, and any bad weather could still delay the effort.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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isn’t mobile broadband an option?
A mobile signal is only radio waves as far as the base station. From there on its fibre optic. So, no, you need the fibre on the sea floor to tale a mobile users internet connection on to the internet.