BT network fault cuts off Shetland coastguards
A fault on BT's network on Monday (July 16th 2012) left coastguards across Shetland without access to emergency communications services for the second time in recent weeks.
The glitch, which occurred on BT's mainland network, left radio masts at Saxa Vord, Collafirth, Fitfull Head and Compass Head out of action for about two hours.
Local auxiliary coastguard teams were forced to use mobile radio sets to pick up emergency transmissions as a result of the outage.
It comes a little over a month after problems with the telecoms giant's infrastructure caused difficulties with aerials receiving VHF signals.
Despite the potential seriousness of such an outage, Shetland coastguard manager Neville Davis played down the problem and said it was simply a part of life on the islands.
"If we had a level of downtime that was much, much higher then I would be concerned, but at the moment there is nothing untoward here," he told Shetland News.
This is the latest outage to affect Scotland, coming after thousands of people in Edinburgh were left without home phone services due to a fault at an exchange in the city in March.
