A BREAK in an undersea cable that caused serious disruption to landline, internet and mobile services on Shetland has been successfully repaired.
Police declared a major incident after the south subsea cable between the islands and the mainland was cut on Thursday.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was an emergency situation. A Resilience Committee had met and was to work "closely with partner agencies to ensure support for those who need it”.
Broadband and mobile connections were later reinstated through a temporary fix, BT said.
Now the cable operator Farosese Telecom has confirmed the link between Shetland and the Faroe Islands is fully fixed.
Work continues on a separate "back-up" cable linking Shetland with the Scottish mainland, thorough Orkney, which was also cut on Thursday.
Faroese Telecom has said it has "reason to believe" that the cable was damaged by a fishing vessel.
A spokesman for the BT Group said: “Following the restoration of all broadband and mobile services to Shetland on Thursday afternoon, Faroese Telecom has confirmed today (Saturday) that their subsea cable connecting Shetland with the Faroe Islands has been successfully repaired.
"All services have remained stable since Thursday afternoon when engineers applied a temporary solution to reconnect Shetland to our network.”
On Thursday, police had put on extra high visibility patrols across the islands and had urged residents to check on vulnerable or elderly neighbours and relatives, in case they needed help.
The outage left the islands council without landline services and cashpoints stopped working.
Aircraft continued to operate from Sumburgh airport on Thursday but all network and mobile links at the airport had failed.
A second subsea cable connecting Shetland and the Faroe Islands was damaged the previous week.
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