Two Undersea Communication Cables Damaged Between NATO Countries Lithuania-Sweden and Finland-Germany
Over the past 24 hours, two submarine communications cables of four NATO countries have been damaged. First, the Finnish company Cinia reported problems with its communication cable that runs under the Baltic Sea and connects Finland to Germany, Yle reports.
On 18 November, Cinia, a fibre-optic network operator, reported a problem with its C-Lion1 cable connecting Finland to Germany. The cause of the problem is still unknown. The cable is 1,173 km long and runs from the Gulf near Helsinki to Rostock in Germany. Launched in 2016, the cable is the only submarine communication cable that runs directly to Central Europe.
Following reports in the Finnish media that an unexplained failure of the submarine telecommunications cable has disrupted communication services between Finland and Germany, Telia's Chief Technology Officer Andrius Šemeškevičius says that the cable between Lithuania and Sweden has also been damaged.
‘The cable was cut on Sunday morning, around 10:00. The systems immediately informed us that we had lost connection. Further investigations and clarifications were carried out, and it turned out that it was damaged,’ Šemeškevičius told LRT TV's Important Hour programme.
According to him, Telia transmits internet connections to Lithuania via three cables, which means that the incident reduced internet bandwidth by a third. However, the connection was restored to users bypassing the fault.
Meanwhile, data transmission between Finland and Germany was completely interrupted. The nearly 1,200-kilometre-long cable is the only direct link of its kind between Finland and Central Europe and runs alongside other important pieces of infrastructure, including gas pipelines and electricity cables.
The failure of the only link between Finland and Central Europe comes weeks after the United States warned that it had detected increased Russian military activity around key submarine cables. The cable is installed and operated by a Chinese company controlled by Finland.