Broadband has been restored in Shetland after an island-wide outage caused by damaged subsea cables.
The island was completely cut off on Thursday after subsea cable connecting to the mainland was damaged.
It is believed a fishing vessel may have caused the damage.
Engineers are still working to repair the cable to fully restore broadband and mobile services to Shetland, but a temporary solution has been in place since Thursday afternoon.
The broadband services have remained stable throughout the night, but engineers will continue to monitor the stability.
Well, it was a quiet day in Market House yesterday with no phones or internet. We are back up and running as normal this morning. Happy Friday all & we hope you have a fabulous weekend 💗
— Voluntary Action Shetland (@VShetland) October 21, 2022
Specialist teams are in Shetland as a precaution with satellite backup links in case either of the subsea cables fails while being repaired.
Faroese Telecom owns the cables and expects to complete the permanent repair of the first damaged cable by this weekend.
The second damaged cable will then be examined by Forese Telecom’s specialist subsea engineers.
Pall Vesturbu, the head of infrastructure for Faroese Telecom, said the damage was probably caused by a fishing vessel but it is “rare” to have two issues at the same time.
A BT Group spokeswoman said: “Following the damage to the Faroese Telecom cables linking Shetland with the Scottish Mainland (via Orkney and the Faroe Islands), engineers have been working flat out to find solutions to restore broadband and mobile services to Shetland.
“While both cable links are being repaired by subsea engineers, engineers were able to reconnect all services via a temporary solution on Thursday afternoon.
“Further testing and monitoring overnight has shown that broadband services have remained stable, and we will continue to monitor this.”
Emergency service response
Meanwhile, it is understood emergency services have a plan in place for if services drop again throughout the day.
A coastguard spokesman confirmed teams are no longer directly assisting, however, are ready to respond if needed.
Police declared a major incident on the island yesterday and an emergency hub has been set up at the Tesco car park in Lerwick.
Officers and vehicles were deployed to the island from across Scotland to assist in the response.
A police spokesman has confirmed the additional resources will remain on the island until normal service is resumed.
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