BROADBAND users on Skye might be back online soon after telecomms giant BT said bad weather has hampered engineers’ efforts to restore service to parts of the island.
Furious islanders, many of whom use the internet for business, have been complaining since before Christmas about an “impossibly downgraded” service, with typical speeds of 0.07 Mbps for downloads.
However, a BT spokesman said in a statement last night that riggers had fixed an intermittent fault at the Scoval radio station serving the Dunvegan area on Hogmanay.
He said: “This was a very complicated fault to diagnose and poor weather conditions exacerbated the time taken to repair it. The fault was caused by small levels of rainwater entering the building where the cables run between the microwave radio dishes located on the mast and the equipment in the building.”
Droplets of water had fallen onto the radio equipment that carried the signal to Dunvegan, causing it to fail. The spokesman added: “This equipment was replaced on a number of occasions before the source of the fault was found. It’s quite warm within the building and the water ingress was very small so it quickly evaporated, hampering our investigations.
“We also replaced all the radio equipment and the cabling at both ends of the link [Dunvegan and Scoval].
“Engineers are now planning to replace equipment at Urray exchange near Muir of Ord, one of the broadband routes between North Skye and Inverness.”
A delighted Valerie Mansley, from Arnisort, one of those who depends on broadband for her work, told The National last night: “We were told that a card has been replaced in the radio station and that appears to have solved the problem.
“I did a speed test earlier and we’re getting a download rate of six Mbps, which is more like it.
“There are some people whose speeds are still slow, but I imagine they’ll pick up as the repair progresses. But the card has been replaced before and didn’t solve the problem, so I think some of us are still not too confident that this will solve the problem.”
More than 900 users had taken to Facebook to complain about broadband speeds and last night a number reported an improvement.
Richard Dorrell, from Roskhill posted: “Ookla and BT Wholesale tests both giving almost identical results – download 3.7, upload 0.36, ping 46. Fastest download speed (by a long way) since 16 December.”
Another user reported: “We’ve got 6.8 download speed here. Amazing... let’s hope it lasts.”
However, Iona Macleod was one of those whose problems remained: “Still dire in Glenhinnisdal (Uig exchange). Ping 1324 ms, download 0.22, upload 0.08. Just about impossible to do anything.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here