Rural Stirling community left 'stranded' during 3-week-long broadband outage

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Residents and businesses in a rural Stirling community who were left without broadband for more than three weeks say that more must be done to reconnect stranded remote villages.Those living and working in Stronachlachar saw their internet services cut off following Storm Babet last month.Broadband there is provided by Broadway Partners, who said that the “adverse weather conditions” led to crucial pieces of equipment being damaged.That was compounded when engineers were unable to reach the site of the outage due to safety concerns over its location.The broadband service ceased on October 19 and yesterday (Thursday), as the Observer went to print, the community was not yet connected as engineers were finally able to begin repairs.It’s understood that the outage occurred in Brig o’ Turk.Businesses and residents reliant on Broadway Partners’ broadband said they had been “left stranded”.Resident Trevor Geraghty said: “This means no WiFi calling, no access to cloud services, online banking, energy top-ups, no ability for business to take payment, no security, no remote control of heating, no WhatsApp, safety issues for visitors etc and this is 2023 in mainland Scotland.“Some residents have had to purchase expensive satellite connections to get some form of connectivity.”A spokesperson for Broadway Partners this week told the Observer yesterday (Thursday): “Adverse weather conditions caused severe damage to some of our equipment which needs to be repaired.“Due to the location of the site, it has been very difficult for our engineers to access safely which has led to the delay in restoring our service for a small number of customers.“The site has now been made safe for access and our engineers are due on site this morning,