Work continues to repair damaged cable

WORK is progressing at sea this morning to repair a damaged subsea cable which has disrupted broadband service on Westray.

The cable ship CS Sovereign arrived on schedule in the early hours of yesterday morning, and has picked up the Westray end of the cable. It then recovered around 300 metres of damaged cable, in a position approximately eight kilometres off the Orkney mainland. The damaged cable has caused a loss of broadband services on Westray. Phone and mobile phone services are not affected.

Opeanreach said that for safety reasons, the ship, which travelled to Orkney from Portland in south of England, moved further out to sea overnight before resuming work this morning.

The spokesman added: “Subsea cable repairs are very complex and time consuming and we expect the work to take several days. All going well, the subsea team hope to start testing the route on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, subject to sea and weather conditions.

“Despite our best efforts to get a radio link up and running, it’s not been possible to synch the radio link with the new broadband technology now available on Westray.

“This means we haven’t been able to provide the back-up broadband over the radio link as we’d hoped. All the other contingencies currently in place to provide emergency Internet connectivity will stay in place until the subsea cable repairs are complete.

“We’re really sorry for the inconvenience the loss of internet is causing. We’d like to thank all the residents and businesses of Westray for their patience and understanding.”