Phone issues resolved at The Balfour

Normal service has resumed with phone lines at The Balfour, NHS Orkney has confirmed.

The update comes, this Sunday morning, a day after subsea cable damage caused numerous internet and telephony issues in Orkney.

Sam Thomas, NHS Orkney’s chief officer of acute services, said: “We would like to thank you all for your patience while we were experiencing network issues affecting outgoing and incoming calls to switchboard and all departments.

“We have now resolved the issues and switchboard are functioning normally.

“We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

It was confirmed on Saturday by Shetland Telecom that a subsea cable connecting Orkney and Banff had been damaged in the early hours of the morning. The SHEFA 2 cable is part of a network of internet infrastructure which suffered similar issues in October 2022 — resulting in a major incident being declared in Shetland.