Internet and phone services in Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroe Islands have been disrupted following damage to a subsea cable connecting the islands.

The Shefa-2 cable was damaged on Saturday (July 26).

The Faroese Telecom-owned cable was reportedly damaged around 3am between Orkney and Banff on the north-east coast.

A repair vessel is expected to arrive this week to assess the site, around 5.5 miles (8.6km) from Orkney, to assess the damage and fix the cable.

The BBC reports that the damage has likely been caused by a fishing boat.

Broadband provider Openreach initially said the subsea cable cut had impacted up to 10,000 customers in the Faroe, Shetland, and Orkney islands, though it has since revised this figure to "hundreds."

Calls to the emergency services (999) have not been impacted.

It's not the first time the Shefa-2 cable has endured a severe outage.

In 2022, the Shetland Islands suffered a major outage which impacted landline, Internet, and mobile services, when the subsea cable was damaged. That particular incident was also thought to be caused by a fishing boat.

Shefa deployed the Shefa-2 cable in 2007. It also operates the Cantat-3 and Hronn cables.