A fibre optic communications cable linking Finland and Germany along the seabed has stopped working and may have been severed by an outside force, the Finnish state-controlled cyber-security and telecoms network company Cinia has said.
The 745-mile (1,200km) C-Lion1 cable running through the Baltic Sea from Finland’s capital, Helsinki, to the German port of Rostock malfunctioned just after 02.00 GMT, the company said.
The sudden outage suggested the cable was completely severed by an outside force, although a physical inspection has yet to be conducted, Cinia’s chief executive, Ari-Jussi Knaapila, told a press conference.
The damage occurred near the southern tip of Sweden’s Öland island and could typically take between five and 15 days to repair, he added.
Cinia said it was working with authorities to investigate the incident.
Last year a subsea gas pipeline and several telecoms cables running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were severely damaged in an incident that raised alarm bells in the region.
Finnish police investigating that case named a Chinese container ship believed to have dragged its anchor as a possible cause, but have not said whether the damage was believed to be accidental or intentional.
In 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany in the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explosions in a case that remains under investigation by German authorities.