Scotland launches feasibility study for second subsea fibre route to Shetland

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On 8 September, the Scottish Government launched a feasibility study for a new subsea fibre route between the Shetland Islands and mainland Scotland. The task has been included in the first-year work programme of the Scottish Government's 2026–2031 Programme for Government. The scope of the study includes identifying and evaluating options for a new subsea communications route, with a particular focus on comparing the impact of different route choices on the resilience of Shetland's broadband and mobile communications networks. The project is currently at the feasibility stage, with no specific landing points, cable route, system capacity, investment scale, or construction timeline yet determined.

This round of government research targets a new independent physical communications route between Shetland and mainland Scotland. In 2025, Shetland experienced two subsea communications cable faults, one of which resulted in a related communications outage lasting 26 days. Minutes from Shetland's local community council meetings show that during the outage, local broadband and mobile networks were affected, with communications constraints reported across postal services, business transactions, card payments, and some home-based healthcare services.

Shetland's existing communications infrastructure includes the Shetland Telecom Project and the North Isles Fibre Project, both delivered by the local authority. The former has established a fibre network extending north from Sumburgh at the southern tip of the Shetland mainland to the Graven oil and gas facility area, while the latter extends the council's fibre network further to the islands of Yell and Unst, providing fibre connectivity to public sector buildings in the northern isles. The focus of this Scottish Government study is not on expanding these inter-island fibre routes, but on adding a new subsea backbone communications link between Shetland and mainland Scotland.

VodafoneThree previously launched another feasibility study for a Shetland subsea communications route in June 2025, proposing to build a new high-speed subsea fibre system from mainland Scotland. At the time, the company explicitly identified the project as a new mainland Scotland–Shetland subsea route covering high-speed internet and telecommunications services. The study was progressed following engagement with Shetland Islands Council in November 2024 and is being carried out in parallel with the local Shared Rural Network mobile communications rollout.

As a result, there are currently two parallel research tracks for a new subsea communications route to Shetland: one launched by the Scottish Government under its 2026–2027 Programme for Government, and another being progressed by VodafoneThree since 2025. Publicly available information has not yet confirmed whether the two studies will adopt the same route, share investment, or ultimately merge into a single construction project, nor have contracts been announced for cable manufacturers, system integrators, marine survey contractors, or cable-laying vessels.

This Scottish Government feasibility study will also assess the actual usage structure of existing routes. Currently, not all telecommunications operators use the same subsea communications route, meaning that a single cable fault does not affect different network providers equally. The new route study will incorporate physical route diversification and operators' existing network access arrangements into the comparison of options, with no investment decision yet made.