A major undersea data cable that connects Finland and Germany, known as the C-Lion1, has been damaged, and authorities are investigating what caused the problem. The cable, which is nearly 1,200 kilometers long and runs under the Baltic Sea, was found to be broken during a routine check at around 4 AM on Monday. The damage was severe: all the fiber connections in the cable were completely cut.
The company in charge of maintaining the cable, Cinia, a Finnish state-owned provider, noticed the issue during its regular monitoring. Right now, they don’t know why the cable broke, but officials suggest that the cause could be something unusual since breaks like this don’t happen easily in these waters. The investigation is still ongoing, and no one has taken responsibility for the incident yet.
The C-Lion1 cable plays a critical role in providing Finland with internet connections to the rest of Europe, so when it broke, there was a risk of significant disruptions. However, Finnish officials say they’ve managed to reroute internet traffic through other cables, so the impact on daily internet usage has been minimized.
Authorities in Finland are aware that cables under the sea are vulnerable to damage. Finland’s Cybersecurity Center said that while disruptions like this do occur from time to time, they can be caused by many things. Sometimes, they happen because of the weather, or even because of human activities like shipping and fishing. In fact, it’s believed that most cable breaks around the world happen due to human mistakes, such as anchors from ships getting tangled in cables.
In the past, there has been some suspicion surrounding cable damages in this region. For example, in October 2023, both Finland and Estonia blamed Russia when a gas pipeline between the two countries was damaged, only for an investigation to later reveal that a Chinese cargo ship’s anchor had caused the damage.
What makes this particular cable damage intriguing is its location. The C-Lion1 runs near the NordStream pipelines, which were damaged in September 2022, causing a lot of speculation and controversy. Those pipelines, which once carried natural gas from Russia to Germany, were blown up, and no one has officially claimed responsibility for the explosions. Some investigative journalists have pointed fingers at the US and Norway, while other reports suggested Ukrainian involvement, though it’s unclear whether Ukraine’s government was aware or responsible.
While the cause of the C-Lion1 damage is still a mystery, it’s clear that the world’s internet infrastructure is vulnerable to a variety of risks, both natural and man-made. And until more is discovered, the question remains: Could this cable break be part of something much bigger?
