Undersea Data Cable Between Finland and Germany Damaged
The undersea data cable between Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea has been damaged, according to Finnish authorities. The cause is still unknown and under investigation. This cable, known as the C-Lion1 cable, spans nearly 1,200 kilometers and connects the Finnish capital, Helsinki, with the German port city, Rostock.
Impact and Investigation
The Finnish provider, Cinia, detected a malfunction in the cable on Monday. Samuli Bergström, head of communications at the National Cyber Security Center Traficom, confirmed the damage. According to Bergström, such disruptions occur occasionally due to various reasons like bad weather or transportation damage. The key is to identify the problems and take corrective measures.
While the outage does affect Finland’s international connections, Bergström assured that the effects are likely not visible to the ordinary citizen. This is because Finland’s data connections flow from several places, so the damage to one connection may burden others but should not disrupt service significantly.
Repair Efforts
Cinia has already initiated repair efforts. A repair ship is ready to be dispatched to the site. The timeline for the repair is uncertain, but typically, the required repair time for submarine cables ranges from 5 to 15 days.
About the Cable
The C-Lion1 cable, stretching 1,173 kilometers, connects Helsinki’s Santahamina island and Rostock in Germany. The cable installation started in October 2015 and was commissioned in spring 2016. It is the only Finnish submarine cable that reaches directly to Central Europe. The cable has eight pairs of fiber-optic strands with a transmission capacity of 144 terabits per second. When put into service, it was expected to be used by data center operators Hetzner Online and TeliaSonera, and Russian telecom operator Avelacom.
Previous Incidents
In October 2023, a power cable and gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia were damaged, apparently by the anchor of a Chinese ship. Around the same time, Sweden reported damage to a cable linking it to Estonia. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) stated that about 200 submarine cable breaks occur worldwide every year, and the most common cause is human activity, such as fishing or anchoring.
