Cash became king in Shetland once again after islanders were left without access to the internet, landlines or mobile services after damage was caused to a subsea cable.
Yesterday, police declared a ‘major incident’ after phone lines and internet were cut.
Restaurants including the No 88 Kitchen and Bar, Golden Coach and many others weren’t able to access online systems.
As a result, customers were unable to pay by card and instead cash took priority once again as the only payment method available.
Additionally, restaurants were unable to get onto their booking system to see who may have booked a table.
The cash-only issue applied to Bonhoga Art Gallery in Weisdale, whereas a spokeswoman for Shetland Museum said customers were still able to use this function.
The outage exposed the reliance of modern day businesses on online systems and also the fragility of Shetland’s connection to the mainland.
It is suspected the damage to the subsea cable was caused by a fishing vessel.
‘Without internet, we couldn’t do anything’
One business particularly affected by the outage was insurance broker TL Dallas.
Ruth Newbold, commercial manager of the Shetland branch, said employees were completely unable to perform their jobs whatsoever.
She explained: “Basically because our whole system is internet-based nowadays, we couldn’t access any client records, information, files or emails, nothing.
“Without the internet, we couldn’t do anything client-based at all.
“Our phone system is also connected via the cloud, so when the broadband and internet go down, that means we have no phoneline.”
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‘Head office only knew through headlines’
Eventually a worker who had Vodafone could get through to the company’s main office in Bradford.
Mrs Newbold joked that they used this opportunity to let them know they’re still alive.
She said: “He had Vodafone, so we were at least able to connect with the head office and say ‘we are still alive!’
“The only way they knew about it was when we got through to them was through BBC headlines.
“I think there was an email that came out saying, ‘Has anybody heard from our friends in Shetland?'”
As of today, TL Dallas’ phonelines and internet is back up and running, thankfully meaning it’s back to business as usual.
‘Cable will be examined by Faroese’
A spokeswoman for BT said: “Following the damage to the Faroese Telecom cables linking Shetland with the Scottish Mainland 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.
“As a precaution, we have specialist teams in Shetland with satellite backup links should either of the subsea cables fail while they are being repaired.
“Faroese Telecom expect to complete the permanent repair to the first damaged cable by this weekend.
“The second damaged cable will then be examined by Faroese Telecom’s specialist subsea engineers.”
Conversation