Marvin

Shetland Broadband supply fixed wireless broadband in Gulberwick. Call them for a price.

Yes, it still does 24hr....well it did a few weeks back.

Mine is fine again. Must have been lightening or power surge. Router was knackered and homeplugs all went pop.

Anybody having problems tonight on the bixter exchange?

Good site MJ! Ive read back through the fault reports. It does not seem to make a lot of sense. Seems to be a BT fault in Orkney.

That'll be BT's cable between the mainland and orkney then. I'm not sure why that would be causing problems in Shetland though.

Doesn't seem to be the SHEFA cable. I can ping London in 24 ms on it.Its not Shefa. Northbound and southbound is working fine.

Shefa 2 is fine so the problem is elsewhere. Marvin.

yes, shockingly bad here too (bixter exchange)

I have no idea how BT have their network configured so I can't help with any further info at the moment. If I find out anything else tomorrow I'll let you know. It is of course possible that there are other problems not related to the cable.

Cable fixed at 2.15pm today

Which renders TT out of town virtually unsable during peak congestion, when traffic is being re-routed off SHEFA. As BT can't maintain their own out of town customer's service quality on the re-routing service, let alone "lesser priority" customer's customers service quality. We have no information on what services/exchanges BT re-routes where when SHEFA2 breaks but my ADSL at home (Bixter exchange on BT) is working well. Right now I'm getting (using speedtest.net) 6Mbps+ (ping 51ms) and my 'usual' (the last time I checked anyway) was about 4.5Mbps (ping 60 to 70ms). Now, this is unlikely to have anything to do with the cable break. I'm guessing BT have renewed/upgraded something in the very long chain from my house to the internet.....but (....am I actually going to say this....?) it's a bit unfair to say that BT's whole network gets kyboshed when their their main route goes down. That said, every time there is an issue Sumburgh exchange seems to get the worst of it so I understand why you say that.. (And for the avoidance of doubt, it is very unlikely that BT have singled me out for any favours)

Well, that's great for them, but I was talking in terms of web access quality Shetland-wide. As JustMe has put it so much more eloquently than I could, Shetland Telecom is only a small niche in the overall market, and by definition only a minority of their customers are likely to be using their internet service during the worst affected 10 hour daily period. The unfortunate thing with Shetland Telecom (as I understand it) is that your averge joe is not really in a position to realistically aspire (especially financially) to being able to access the service anytime soon. Frankly, while Shetland Telecom is a good idea, unless it is made available at more realistic terms to everyone, anyone wishing to escape to stranglehold of BT corner cutting inadequacy is going to find Tooway looking much more attractive. I know what you are saying and understand where you are coming from. Giving access to domestic customers was not what we were set up to do. The main reason we were set up was to enable ISPs to deliver better services. We have done that and many have (including BT), hence our frustration with some of them for not using it. The Vidlin and Fetlar projects were pilot projects with the aim of seeing if it was technically and financially possible. West Burrafirth have used the model and funded that themselves. We can't really do much else at the moment (other than backhaul/transmission) networks until the BDUK scheme develops a bit further. It is unlikely that the Council or anybody else will invest while BDUK is claiming 75% coverage of 'superfast' broadband. So we are between a rock and a hard place as far as domestic customers are concerned. That said, Unst, Yell and Fetlar are advancing through the Community Broadband Scotland initiative. They are looking to make 25Mbps+ available to everybody in the north isles.

I would imagine a wholesale and service provider as big as BT would have sourced sufficient if not equal bandwidths on all routes. They also still have the microwave route so they actually have three routes. If ISPs choose not to buy it from them then there is little anybody (other than the ISPs) can do about it I'm afraid.

Our definition of 'resilient' is the same capacity on all routes. Customers connected to Shetland Telecom network will be experiencing a 5 to 10 millisecond increase in ping. No reduction in bandwidth whatsoever.

The Shefa cable is broken between Orkney and Shetland. This is not an issue for most ADSL customers because all exchanges outside of Lerwick use BT Wholesale regardless of their ISP. BT Wholesale provide the backhaul and because they buy a resilient service from Faroese Telecom, these customers automatically either re-route to Torshavn and back to the UK by a different route (via Faroese Telecom and Shetland Telecom network) OR the old microwave link. BTW decide which customers/exchanges/services use which route and we have no visibility on which is using what route, so I can't give any further info. In Lerwick, the situation is a little more complicated. There is another 'wholesale' provider. This wholesale provider has chosen not buy a resilient service and does not have the option of switching to an alternative route. Some ISPs (I'm guessing the Post Office is one judging by the comments above) use this wholesale provider (for broadband and voice). I would recommend that broadband customers change provider to one that uses resilient backhaul. Cable breaks are not uncommon and will happen again. I don't have a list of which ISPs use resilient backhaul services but I can confirm that BT, Faroese Telecom, Shetland Telecom and Shetland Broadband customers are unaffected by the cable break (there may well be other unrelated problems on the networks which I don't know about though) The cable ship is on route to repair the cable but weather is an issue. The fix is likely to take another week. We will be posting updates on the Shetland Telecom facebook page when we get them. Marvin Smith Shetland Telecom

I am having (what seems like)contention problems on the Bixter exchange at the moment. Fine through the day and then speeds drop to almost unusable in the evenings. Anybody else?

Faroese Telecom says Shefa2 repairs should be completed by morning. Edit - it's working now.

I have no idea what's wrong with ADSL in Shetland at the moment. I can ask BT tomorrow.

UPDATE - Faroese Telecom re routed Shetland Telecom traffic from Shetland on to DANICE (cable from Denmark to Iceland). Customers may notice an increase in ping times as all traffic is going from Shetland to Faroe, then to Iceland then Denmark and finally to London. Normal service will be resumed at 4am. EDIT - this only applies to community broadband customers in Vidlin, Fetlar and West Burrafirth. If you are having problems with ADSL then you need to contact your ISP.

Due to emergency work on Faroese Telecom’s network, there will be an outage to all customers connected to Shetland Telecom’s fibre network tonight from 10pm to 2am. There was a break in the SHEFA2 cable on Friday morning south of Orkney. All Shetland Telecom traffic was successfully diverted on to FARICE1 (resilient route) which connects Faroe and Iceland to the UK. Faroese Telecom are now having to do emergency work on this route (FARICE1) which will mean that all customers connected to Shetland Telecom’s network will be without service from 10pm tonight until 2am. We have been assured that the work is critical. Shetland Telecom wishes to apologise to all customers. NB – Customers include community broadband schemes in Vidlin, Fetlar and West Burrafirth.

I couldn't agree more but the Council was going to spend money on getting them demolished. We needed space for servers. So to avoid additional expense of putting up buildings we decided that converting the toilets would be the best plan and would save money all round. On our network they are called Bloomsbury (postcode WC1) and Aldwych (WC2).

All Shetland (except Lerwick exchange) broadband traffic was diverted on to SIC/FT fibre (regardless of which ISP you use). The problems were restricted to Lerwick exchange area which has 21-CN. The availability of 21-CN allows ISPs more choice of wholesale provider. This is normally a good thing but... Some ISPs are (evidently) using a wholesale provider (not BT Wholesale or Faroese Telecom) which is not using the resilient route. [clear as mud, I know...] That said, I would be surprised if PlusNet didn't use BT Wholesale which uses the SIC/Faroese Telecom resilient route.

Very well explained. There is LLU in Lerwick though.

http://www.shetnews.co.uk/newsbites/6505-broadband-outage