Authorities with the state-controlled Finish company, Cinia, are trying to figure out what went wrong after an undersea telecommunications cable linking Finland and Germany, that they operate, suddenly failed.
The C-Lion1 cable, which first went into operation in 2016, runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea for roughly 730 miles and is the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and central Europe. The cable also runs along other important pieces of infrastructure including gas pipelines and power cables.
The failure comes just weeks after the Biden administration warned that it had detected Russian military activity around undersea cables. Earlier, in September, two senior U.S. officials said that Russia was likely to conduct sabotage operations on important pieces of infrastructure.
The overall impact of the cable’s failure remains to be seen.
Cinia said in a statement on Monday evening that a vessel is ready to go to investigate the fault.
READ MORE:
- Once the ‘World’s Factory,’ Closing Businesses and Decaying Industrial Parks Litter Dongguan, China
- Enough Lithium in Southern Arkansas to Meet 2030’s Global Demand: USGS
- China Escalates Tensions With Taiwan Via Live-Fire Drills as Regional Concerns Mount
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
Speculation swirls
There are a number of competing theories as to what exactly happened to the vital data connection, including speculation that maritime vessels may be to blame.
Submarine cables can be damaged by fishing activities. Nets, used by fishing trawlers, can sometimes snag and damage undersea infrastructure when the nets are pulled or dragged along the seabed.
Large vessels have been known to cause damage when their anchors drag along the seabed particularly when the vessel is not in a designated anchor area or when there is a navigation error.
The most unlikely explanation is natural causes. Underwater landslides, earthquakes or even strong currents could possibly cause cable breaks, however natural causes are rarely cited as the reason behind undersea cable failures.
One of the more recent naturally caused outages occurred in 2011 when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan, knocking out several undersea cables and in 2022, volcanic activity severed undersea cables near Tonga, leaving the Pacific kingdom without data access.
Considering the geopolitical context of the region, many are speculating that the failure is the result of intentional sabotage, however no evidence of such has surfaced so far.
The precise reason for the failure remains under investigation and will not be known until efforts, involving sending a specialized vessel to locate and repair the fault, are undertaken.
READ MORE:
- China Opens Controversial Deep-water Megaport in Chancay, Peru
- Chinese Woman Who Spent 14 Years Convincing 70,000 Compatriots to Quit the CCP Shares Her Experience
- Night Biking Becomes China’s Latest Youth Craze, Sparking Excitement and Concerns
Essential infrastructure
The world relies on undersea cables to facilitate communication, drive economies and keep people connected.
Currently, there are approximately 870,000 miles of undersea cables in service today, facilitating over $10 trillion worth of financial transactions a day and carrying over 99 percent of international voice and electronic data.
With this much cable, failures do happen on a regular basis. The best estimates are that unplanned outages occur approximately 150 times a year.
Most outages are the result of accidents, including fishing equipment being dragged along the seabed.
The first undersea cable to ever be attempted was in August, 1850 when a simple copper wire coated in a substance called “gutta-percha” was laid across the English Channel, however it failed to work as intended.
The next, and first successful attempt, occurred in 1853 when telegraph cables were laid that linked Great Britain with Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, crossing The Belts in Denmark.
These accomplishments paved the way for the first trans-Atlantic cable later in the century and the first trans-Pacific cable being laid around the turn of the 19th century.
