{"id":187373,"date":"2025-10-09T06:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/187373\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T06:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:07:10","slug":"shetland-internet-disruption-to-last-more-than-a-week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/187373\/","title":{"rendered":"Shetland internet disruption to last more than a week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Repairs to the sub-sea cable which brings internet services to Shetland are expected to take more than a week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The cable was damaged in rough seas on Friday in shallow waters about a mile off the coast of Orkney.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Communications company OpenReach said some broadband services in Shetland have been affected, including Talk Talk customers in Lerwick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The SHEFA-2 Cable is owned by Faroese Telecom and was <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c0j9p4d7njxo\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 jZoZnB\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">last damaged in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">OpenReach said the majority of customers still had a service and phone connections remained &#8220;up and running&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">It was previously reported Orkney was also affected, but OpenReach said there was no impact on the islands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The BBC has so far been unable to confirm how many customers have been affected by the latest disruption.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Hundreds of people lost services in July, although the initial estimates were that thousands had been affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The cable, which links Orkney, Shetland and the Faroe Islands to mainland Scotland, was also damaged in October 2022 in an incident thought to have involved a fishing vessel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Speaking on <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/m002l3zx\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 jZoZnB\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Around Orkney<\/a>, Faroese Telecom managing director P\u00e1ll Vesturb\u00fa said the location of the repair is affecting how long it will take to restore services.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We have contacted the company that does the repair for us so they are preparing. Since it&#8217;s so close to the shore [there] needs to be some extra work, some extra preparation to make sure that everything is ready when the vessel arrives,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;So that has stayed off the repair just now. I hope it can be no more than a week but it&#8217;s a bit difficult to say.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Writing on social media, the Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael said: &#8220;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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We have to hope that the disruption will be minimal and short-lived. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Talk Talk said it was providing its customers with updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Repairs to the sub-sea cable which brings internet services to Shetland are expected to take more than a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-187373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}