Crime?

Data cable damaged: Finnish police investigate

A data cable running between Finland and Sweden was damaged on Tuesday night. This was reported by the radio station Sveriges Radio, referring to police reports. The Finnish police are assuming that a crime has been committed. However, they deny this.

The Swedish telecommunications authority PTS confirmed to the newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" that a fiber optic cable had been damaged on land in Finland. There were widespread Internet outages in Finland. Finnish Transport and Communications Minister Lulu Ranne wrote on X that the authorities are investigating the matter. "We are taking the situation seriously," Ranne concluded her post.

The Finnish police, meanwhile, denied reports that they were investigating the damage. The Finnish network operator Elisa also contradicted the media reports on Tuesday. The company's head of security told the newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat" that an excavator had accidentally cut the cable in Vihti. He did not give any details about the damage in Espoo. The police statement said that they were working with other authorities to find out what had happened.

The data and communications company GlobalConnect had previously announced that it was a land line that had been damaged in two different places. The incident had already occurred on Monday and repair work had been underway since then. One damage has already been repaired. Submarine cables were not affected.

Data cable damaged in the Baltic Sea
It was only in November that damage to two fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea occurred within a short period of time. These were a cable running between Sweden and Lithuania and one between Finland and Germany. The cause is still unclear in both cases. The Swedish authorities are investigating possible sabotage.

The investigators are focusing on a Chinese ship called "Yi Peng 3", which is said to have passed the affected parts of the cables at the time in question.