Undersea data cable between Germany and Finland broken

Authorities in Finland are investigating the cause of a broken underwater cable in the Baltic Sea which runs southwest to Germany.

State-owned data service provider Cinia reported on Monday that a fault had been detected in the C-Lion1 cable.

Communication connections 'interrupted'

"As a result of the fault, the communication connections running on the C-Lion1 submarine cable are down," the company said, adding that the cause of the disruption was being investigated.

The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE cited Samuli Bergström, communications chief at the Finnish National Cyber Security Center Traficom, as also having confirmed the break.

"The reasons are under investigation. Disturbances occur from time to time and there can be various reasons. For example, they are susceptible to weather and damage caused by shipping. The essential thing is that the problems are identified and corrective measures are taken," he said.

"However, it is good to keep in mind that data connections out of Finland go from several different places. Now one of these connections is broken, which may burden others [but the effects are] probably not visible to the average citizen," Bergström said.

Damage to undersea cables in recent years

The C-Lion1 cable runs nearly 1,200 kilometers (around 750 miles) from the German port city of Rostock to the Finnish capital, Helsinki.

It was commissioned in 2016 and is the only undersea communications cable running from the Nordic country to central Europe according to Cinia.

In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged in what Finnish authorities at the time said was likely to have been a deliberate act.

However, Helsinki and Beijing have been engaged in diplomatic talks since October of last year over the possible role of a Hong Kong-registered cargo vessel in the damage caused to the pipeline.

Also in October 2023, Sweden reported that an undersea cable with Estonia had also been damaged.

Both Finland and Sweden joined NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, having been neutral throughout the Cold War.

kb/msh (AP, Reuters)