[Herald] The resilience and quality of Scotland’s broadband and phones network has been called into question after it emerged yesterday it has been hit by five major failures in a week.
The Herald can reveal that BT was dealing with broadband disruption issues on Friday across the Edinburgh area while still dealing with separate problems which have affected tens of thousands across Scotland, the north of England and Northern Ireland for a week.
It has also emerged that issues relating to a communications breakdown, which left thousands on Orkney and Shetland without a telephone service for up to 36 hours, were still being dealt with on Saturday.
Michael Fourman, chairman of the Royal Society of Edinburgh think-tank’s Digital Scotland working group, said that repeated failures showed a more resilient network was required.
“The resultant disruption to business and domestic users underlines the extent to which transport, health, education, business, and almost all other areas of society have come to rely on always-on connectivity.
“In order to operate effectively in the modern world, Scotland needs a modern, robust core network reaching all communities, as recommended in our recent Digital Scotland report.”
BT said the problems were regrettable, but insisted the network was resilient.
About 4000 broadband and telephone users on the Orkney island of Sanday faced disruption after lightning struck a radio relay station on Tuesday.
Engineers were delayed in reaching Sanday because a ferry sailing was cancelled due to “atrocious weather conditions” and a flight was fully booked.
A BT spokesman said: “While BT has improved its network resilience over the years, a direct hit from a lightning strike can still cause massive damage to our radio infrastructure.
“Despite the damage to our network, the vast majority of our customers in Orkney did not lose their telephone, broadband or access to the 999 service.”
The latest breakdown in the Edinburgh area was still being dealt with on Saturday night but was resolved yesterday.
It comes after BT who run the phone network line infrastructure, confirmed a problem affecting large sections of Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland on Wednesday was due to a “similar technical issue” to one which hit at least 20,000 at the weekend.
It is understood tens of thousands of consumers and businesses were affected by the fault at BT’s Edinburgh exchange on Wednesday. Broadband and phone users in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Ayr, Motherwell, Crieff, Stranraer, Dumfries, Bathgate and parts of the Highlands and Islands were hit.
The problems arose just three days after BT said it had fixed the “hardware issue” at the Edinburgh exchange which caused broadband and phone services to break down on the evening of October 29.
BT service status data shows that the issue was still “ongoing” last night while engineers were reporting the problem should have been fixed and that “the majority” of customers were back online on Thursday night.
Last weekend thousands more homes in the west of Scotland served by Virgin Media experienced further disruption to their internet and television connections.
The BT spokesman said: “BT is carrying out further investigations about the issues raised.
“A million Scots use the broadband network and 30 million calls are made on the Scottish telephone network every day. Last week’s were the first major issues for a long time.”
In April, BT announced it planned to upgrade 32 telephone exchanges across Scotland for so-called “next generation” broadband services, benefiting more than 260,000 homes and businesses by spring of 2011.
Four exchanges – Aberdeen Ashgrove, Dundee, Greenock and Irvine Bourtree – were ready for service in August but there have been no upgrades since.
A BT spokesman told The Herald: “We are on course to cover 55% of Scotland’s homes and businesses by next spring.”
Questions after major failures hit BT network
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