This morning, Wednesday 30 November, a specialist cable repair ship arrived to begin cable repair to the break in one of the submarine fibre-optic cables. These were cut by a ship’s anchor on Monday evening. It is hoped that this cable will be repaired by early next week, although that will be dependent on the weather and extent of the damage. Another ship is en route from France to repair the second cable. The third damaged cable will be repaired after that.

Daragh McDermott, Director of Corporate Affairs for JT, said:
“I am pleased to say that so far disruption has been kept to an absolute minimum. I would especially like to thank our engineering teams. They have been working around the clock to keep the islands connected via our cable link with France. Also thanks to our customers for their understanding.

“Thanks to the actions taken since the cables were cut, we have capacity in place to manage demand, although we have obviously lost spare capacity should further issues arise.

“We have monitored our network closely and have seen little impact on customer services – although there may be some disruption at peak times.

“Fortunately, we have been able to move quickly to address this unprecedented issue. This is because of assistance from Sure. I would like to thank them for that important support.

We will continue to keep customers up-to-date with what is an extremely
challenging emergency engineering operation at sea.”

ENDS