Service disruption after Orkney-Caithness subsea cable damaged
- Published
Customers in Thurso were among those affected last week
Repairs are to be made to a damaged subsea communications cable between Orkney and the Highland mainland.
Services to some customers in Stromness in Orkney, and Wick and Thurso in Caithness, were disrupted after the cable was damaged late last Tuesday.
Openreach said affected services were rerouted and restored to Wick on Friday and to Thurso and Stromness on Saturday.
There are no details at this stage about what caused the damage.
Most voice and broadband services were unaffected.
Openreach said it the incident was not related to the Shefa-2 cable, which was damaged last October leading to severely disrupted services in Shetland.
A spokeswoman said no-one should now be without communication services in Orkney or Caithness following last week's cable damage.
She said: "The subsea repair ship is currently on the way to Orkney, with work on subsea repairs 1.7km off Orkney mainland expected to start late this week and continue over the coming weekend - as long as it's safe to go ahead.
"Conditions like wind strength and direction, wave height and tidal flow will be assessed once the vessel, work boats, shore crew and divers are all on site."
- Published20 October 2022
