Finland: Outage reported after fiber optic cable broken
A broken fiber optic cable on land in Finland has been discovered, Swedish media and the company working to repair it reported on Tuesday.
Sveriges Radio — Sweden’s national broadcaster — reported the company affected by the damaged cable between Sweden and Finland, Global Connect, said that 6,000 private customers and some 100 business customers were affected by the rupture.
Finnish Transport and Communications Minister Lulu Ranne posted on X that “authorities are investigating the matter together with the company.”
“We are taking the situation seriously.”
Finnish police said there would be no “criminal” inquiry for the time being. However, in a message to the news agency AFP, Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said “sabotage” was suspected.
Previous breaches raise suspicions of sabotage
This week’s incident follows recent breaches of two undersea fiber optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea. In that case, two fiber cables located more than 100 nautical miles (about 200 kilometers) apart in the Baltic Sea bottom were severed, raising suspicions of sabotage.
That rupture occurred on November 17-18 in an area where a China-flagged vessel had been sighted.
Beijing said last week it was ready to assist in the following probe after Sweden asked for cooperation. Both cables were restored as of November 29.
The countries bordering the Baltic Sea consist of eight NATO nations of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany, plus Russia.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he believed the cables were likely damaged in an act of sabotage.
Russia has dismissed claims by European officials that Moscow was involved as “absurd” and “laughable.”
The November 2024 cable damage took place in the same maritime region where the Nord Stream pipelines underwater explosions and consequent gas leaks occurred. The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines were rendered inoperable in September 2022, some seven months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
jsi/ab (Reuters, dpa, AFP, AP)
