Subsea Cable Break Knocks Out Broadband and Mobile for Part of Orkney UPDATE
A BT subsea fibre optic cable that runs between Evie on the Orkney Mainland and nearby Westray, which forms part of an archipelago off the northeastern coast of Scotland, has suffered a “major” break that’s disrupting both broadband and some mobile (Vodafone / Three UK and O2) connectivity for over 500 customers in the North Isles (inc. Eday, Stronsay and Sanday).
The cause of the break, which occurred earlier in the week, has not yet been identified. But the most common reasons tend to stem from ships dragging their anchors across cables, fishing trawlers dragging large nets in the same way (fishing fleets usually know where the cables run, but not every trawler pays proper attention) or weather damage (only relevant if the break is in shallow water). In the current climate nobody can rule out the potential for sabotage (here), but it seems unlikely for this particular link.
Repairing the damage will require a full cable lift and rejoin, which will be carried out by a specialist repair ship. BT are currently known to be working with cable ship providers to arrange this, although a timeline is not yet known. At present only landline phones and EE + Three UK mobile services appear to be operational on Westray, although capacity issues will be impacting 4G / 5G mobile broadband connectivity.
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Statement by Scottish Government Digital Connectivity team:
“Our understanding is that a subsea cable fault is impacting broadband services in several of the northern isles in Orkney, specifically Eday, Stronsay and Sanday, with around 500 fibre broadband customers currently without service. A small number of public sector sites are also affected. The EE mobile network appears largely unaffected, however Voda3 and VMO2 mobile services are currently down.”
BT are said to be considering the potential deployment of a temporary radio (Microwave) link between Westray and Sanday to restore some fibre connectivity, while Starlink’s LEO satellite based broadband network could also be installed at key public sector sites. Locals could of course order their own individual Starlink connections too.
Sadly such breaks can sometimes take several weeks to fully repair, which is partly due to the time it takes to survey the break and arrange a cable repair ship to be dispatched, as well as uncertainty around the scale of damage and weather.
UPDATE 24th March 2026
Just to clarify some points. Customers of Three UK did still have access to mobile connectivity. By Friday last week, VodafoneThree had also enabled its second Three UK site in Westray to share coverage with Vodafone customers. This means that nearly all affected Vodafone customers have regained mobile coverage while repairs to the cable are under way. This will apply wherever Three UK customers currently have coverage.
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VodafoneThree inform us that they’ve put extra support in place for affected broadband customers too. If they are both a broadband and mobile customer, the operator has added a free 50GB Stay Connected package to their account. The operator has also sent MiFi devices to all affected Vodafone home broadband customers, so they can stay online while services are disrupted.
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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Why on earth is there not a permanent backup microwave / wireless link rather than considering to deploy one temporarily? Or even backhaul over Starlink if they offer such an option should the fibre go down.
Resiliency & redundant links all add to deployment costs, which feed into consumer pricing. There’s massive downward pressure here, and the cost/benefit/risk ratios are likely deemed acceptable.
Some of EE’s sites have satellite resilience for ESN purposes.
A better question would be, why are the islands not connected in a ring? A single cable from Stronsay to Shapinsay would close the ring.
Probably a matter of money. Deploying subsea fibre is an expensive business, so you can’t always build redundancy within the same budget.
It should be there. I suspect the fibre was subsidised by the taxpayer and the deployment was kept to a bare minimum to pass the premises as that was all they could get funding for. It is essential that some redundancy is built whether a fibre ring or sufficient microwave capacity.
BT Group either keep paying out for the workarounds, compensation to both the end users and to the wholesale customers, etc, etc, or they invest in resiliency. Hopefully after this the business case is clear.
As we are moving towards dependency on online services its pretty alarming there is no fall back or resilience in the broadband system anywhere not just on the Orkneys. Mobile may bring some back up where it has the capacity, but that is more by design or accident.
You get the SLA you pay for. Adding any level of resilience at least doubles cost. My heuristic from decades of doing this at home and abroad is to multiply the non-resilient cost by 2.4 to get to a starting figure.
People don’t want to pay 2.4x what they do today for broadband. That’s why leased lines exist. Residential customers choose almost exclusively on price alone.
My 300Mb backup connected to the same switch costs 1.4 times as much as my 8Gb primary. Duly noted.
The dependency is being driven by government policy not the consumer. When my broadband goes down and the digital phone with it I have no way of contacting the doctor, I can’t access most central and local government services, etc etc
I am not suggesting a full backup network is built but more that there should be ways of dealing with incidents that don’t rely on Openreach taking weeks to fix the problem.
Time to get Star Link in.
How long is it since BT sold off its fleet of Cable ships off? If wouldn’t have to be ‘buying’ in ship time if it still had it’s own fleet.
True but how often are they going to be using those cable ships given they aren’t building or maintaining marine fibre outside of the British Isles, Fred? Quite a cost to have ships and crew on standby just in case.
Yes it would. Even if BT owned those ships they wouldn’t just be sitting around idle in case of a UK cable break. They’d be working somewhere. The ownership of those boats makes no difference to their availability.
And yet BT, who claim to be impoverished by a, Race to the bottom on Broadband contract pricing. Can still afford to pay their Directors & Chief executives eye watering sums into the many millions, for what many people still languishing on, antiquated Copper lines consider failure. Strange that they can afford massive largesse for some, but for the Left behind on the Islands, it’s Value service all the way…
I doubt much if any largesse is being funded by operating in the Scottish islands.
Always the highlands I hear those cables broke. Just a thought
I live in one of Ornkney’s Northern Isles which is affected by the cable break. Fortunately before choosing FTTP I had a broadband link via local firm Norsenet and was able to resurrect the link thus providing communication albeit at a lower speed.
Actually…due to the fact that BT are in the process of digitising the landline system, most of us don’t have working landlines and are having to travel off island to get any kind of network connection.
There is plenty of microwave capacity to restore service … the issue is that all the experts that can enable this have been “let go” as part of cost cutting.
The issue started on the 16th. Today is the 24th. So far BT has not managed to arrange a cable repair vessel. Hence there is still no timeline whatsoever. The one vessel we had last time, is currently sitting in Northern Spain. There are others… but availability is tricky because there aren’t many of them (worldwide). I wonder when did BT actually start to actively source a ship? Are they last in a queue? The whole situation is untenable. This is not the first time the isles are “off”. It isn’t the second or third time either. Hence there is reason to believe that the cables should be protected better. Were corners cut? Were the cables not buried (which takes longer than have them just dangling all over the sea floor)? How often do we have to put up with such a situation again and again? According to the local news (which are the only source of any basic information at all because BT does not provide publicly accessible information) BT “hope” that repairs could start by the end of the month. They hope? They don’t know? Well, by now they should have at least some clue. Even for the ones that are still on the old copper the situation causes issues. Because between them and the ones on the defunct fibre there is no communication. How BT is dealing with the situation is a disgrace. Do they care about a few hundred islanders? Surely, when it comes to bill paying but apparently not, when there are service expectations to be met.