Communications fault black outs internet and maritime radio 23/7/14
Some 3,000 island homes and businesses have been hit by a major communications blackout over the past two days.
Faulty equipment at BT’s mainland telephone exchange at Gairloch resulted in a very poor quality signal being transmitted over the main microwave link from the mainland to a receiver at Holm, by Stornoway, which feeds into the islands broadband network.
The parts of Lewis -
BT pledged the broadband network would be repaired by Wednesday night.
A BT spokesman said: “A faulty card in the telephone exchange at Gairloch has resulted in a degraded broadband service on the radio link to Stornoway.
“Around 3,000 broadband-
“A replacement card has been sourced and is being couriered to Gairloch with an estimated time of arrival of around 5pm.
“We’d like to apologise for the current poor quality of the broadband service but we’re aiming to restore normal service within the next couple of hours.”
Important coastguard and maritime radio services for the west coast of Scotland were knocked out and Stornoway coastguard was unable to transmit weather and navigation warnings.
In case of an emergency at sea, volunteers coastguards were sent to prominent hills
with hand-
Coastguards radio systems’ were back on air earlier on Wednesday but the island’s BT’s broadband links continued to be affected.
People paying fines by bank card at Stornoway Sheriff Court were turned away as their IT systems were down completely.
Many island businesses could not get on the internet to check e-
A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: "This outage is a BT issue that has affected our VHF radio coverage.
“We do have contingency plans in place to ensure that cover is maintained throughout these types of outages.
“In this case, Stornoway Coastguard has been coordinating the manning of remote radio sites to ensure that coverage is maintained."