Yesterday, December 26, Finland discovered disruptions in four telecommunications cables connecting the country with Germany and Estonia. The cause of the damage is currently unknown.
Yesterday, December 26, Finland discovered disruptions in four telecommunications cables connecting the country with Germany and Estonia. The cause of the damage is currently unknown.
Two submarine cables belonging to Finnish company Elisa and one belonging to Chinese company CITIC Telecom have been damaged. All three run between Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia, according to Finland’s national broadcaster Yle.
The fourth cable is the C-Lion1 submarine cable of the Finnish company Cinia, which connects Helsinki with Germany.
According to the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom), Elisa’s cables were severed and two others were damaged. According to Traficom CEO Jarkko Saarimäki, telecommunications cables are strong and damage to them usually requires external force.
Elisa Security Director Jaakko Vallenius says the outages have not affected the operator’s services in Finland and Estonia, but it is too early to estimate how long the repair work will take.
The situation is particularly worrying because the incidents seem to always involve vessels affiliated with two countries: Russia and China.
Earlier, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that an underwater power cable connecting the country with Estonia failed on Christmas Day .
At the time of the incident, two ships were sailing in the area of the cable. One of them was the oil tanker Eagle S, which is believed to be part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet. Finland later boarded the ship, the coast guard took command and directed the tanker into Finnish waters. The Finnish customs service said it had confiscated the ship’s cargo.
