Submarine cable incident record
North Atlantic and Europe cable incident — Confirmed — 2026-05-11
Subsea cable break disrupts broadband and mobile in part of Orkney, Scotland.
Search indexing is withheld for this snapshot because its retained public sources do not meet the archive's indexing freshness rule. The record remains available for traceability; search-indexing policy does not change its Confirmed or Suspected class.
Confirmed
- Public classification
- Confirmed
- Affected cable or system
- Confirmed regional incident; no cable was deterministically attributed
- Affected countries
- United Kingdom
- Region
- North Atlantic and Europe
- Network state
- Network recovered; physical repair not confirmed
- Physical state
- Repair in progress confirmed by report
Lifecycle
- Occurred:
- Repair activity reported:
- Network recovered: — this does not confirm physical repair.
Original supporting evidence
- Subsea Cable Break Knocks Out Broadband and Mobile for Part of Orkney UPDATE - ISPreview UK
- Tiree Subsea Cable Repairs Begin After Storm Damage - SubTel Forum
- Tiree Island Suffers Protracted Broadband Outage After Subsea Cable Break - ISPreview UK
- Major internet outage in Scottish island after damage to subsea cable - The National Scot
- Repair ship arrives at site of subsea cable fault to begin work on restoring internet connectivty - Shetland Times
- Fishing vessel believed to have damaged subsea cable - Shetland News
- Subsea cable fault still affecting hundreds of customers in Shetland and Orkney - but less widespread than first thought - Shetland Times
- Subsea cable repairs likely to take until next weekend - Shetland Times
- Connectivity Damage to subsea cable leads to internet outages - Shetland News
Recorded traffic signals
- GB · radar · z=-1.8293915580734779 · 2026-05-11T03:00:00.000Z
- GB · radar · z=-1.8293069776048512 · 2026-05-13T03:00:00.000Z
- GB · radar · z=-1.7924345750230228 · 2026-05-14T03:00:00.000Z
- GB · radar · z=-1.8033435040525414 · 2026-05-21T03:00:00.000Z
Public-network measurements can support a Suspected record but cannot prove a physical cable fault or repair. Network recovery can result from rerouting and does not establish physical repair. Confirm operational decisions with the cable owner or carrier.