Farmer Out Of Reach For Two Weeks, During Avalanche Risk

Indriði Aðalsteinsson, farmer at Skjaldfönn, a remote farm by Ísafjarðardjúp, in the West Fjords, has been out of telecommunication reach for two weeks, due to a network failure. This was reported by DV on Wednesday. Reportedly, two other farms are out of reach as well. Skjaldfönn is threatened by possible snow avalanches.

A hurricane-level storm hit the area on Tuesday. Indriði’s wife, Kristbjörg Lóa Árnadóttir, who resides and works in Reykjavík, has not been able to reach her husband for those two weeks. Interviewed by DV on Wednesday, she expressed her anger at Míla, the country’s core telecommunications network provider, founded through privatization in 2007.

“When I called, last Friday, they said they needed some special equipment from Reykjavík to find out the origins of the failure. That tool wasn’t supposed to go West until Monday. I wonder: why on earth didn’t they find out long ago that they need this particular tool, and why wait from Friday until Monday? The weather forecast was bad and this farm should be prioritised, because it is at risk of avalanches hitting it from either side.”

Míla’s public relations manager, Sigurrós Jónsdóttir, says that it has been hard to keep three farms in Ísafjarðardjúp connected lately, including Skjaldfönn. The other two are Laugaland and Laugarholt. According to the PR-manager, all these farms are connected through microwave networks, which now suffer from interferences, whose origins have not been found.

According to Míla, an analogue connection to the network would be safer than the farms’ current ISDN connection. Kristbjörg, however, claims that she and her husband were not informed that the digital IDSN connection would be less secure than the earlier analogue technology.