BT boss to be quizzed on poor Shetland broadband service

Residents and business people from Shetland will be able to quiz BT Scotland director Brendan Dick at the second Northern Isles Digital Forum meeting on Thursday.

With a constant stream of complaints about the company’s fault-prone broadband service, Mr Dick has accepted an invitation from isles MP Alistair Carmichael to attend the gathering at 12.30pm at Islesburgh Community Centre.

Mr Carmichael said: “The potential benefits of broadband internet and digital technologies in places like Shetland are enormous. However, for many years local services have been unreliable and patchy at times. This impacts on most of us in one way or another, not least those businesses who are missing out on opportunities and potential new markets as a result of poor quality digital links.

“Problems on the mainland or even the weather have caused outages in the past and serious questions need to be asked over how we can ensure that Shetland gets a more robust and consistent internet service. BT is the key player in our local internet market and this second meeting of the forum will give people the opportunity to raise these concerns with senior management from the company as well as local engineers who will have a better understanding of the situation on the ground here.

“I would encourage anyone with an interest in these issues to come along to the meeting this week.”