Finland reported this Tuesday that it was investigating the causes of two breaks in terrestrial fiber optic cables in the Nordic country, the latest in a series of telecommunications infrastructure outages affecting the Baltic Sea region, Reuters reports.
Nordic telecommunications group GlobalConnect has stated that one of the two breaks was probably due to excavation, while it was still investigating the second incident. This Tuesday morning one of the faults had already been repaired.
The outage came after recent breaks in two undersea fiber optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, which raised suspicions of possible sabotage.
“The authorities are investigating the matter together with the company. We take the situation very seriously,” declared the Finnish Minister of Transport and Communications, Lulu Ranne, in a publication on the social network X.
The cables that failed were in the towns of Espoo and Vihti – the latter’s cable appears to have been accidentally cut by an excavator. At the moment, the police are investigating the situation together with other authorities.
The breaks occurred in a connection linking Finland and Sweden, a spokesman for the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Authority said.
“Due to the circumstances surrounding what happened, sabotage is suspected,” Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said in a written statement.
Swedish media have reported that police suspect foul play. Bohlin has stated that the Finnish police are investigating what happened. According to the minister, due to the circumstances, it is suspected that the cable break was done on purpose.
The Länsi-Uusimaa police could not confirm that the institution had a criminal case related to the fiber optic cable under investigation. The statement says the matter will be investigated and the information will be made public as soon as possible.
Samuli Bergström, director of Traficom’s Cybersecurity Center, responsible for anomaly management, said the center is monitoring the situation and trying to gather more information.
This incident occurs two weeks after the mysterious breakage of two underwater telecommunications cables between Finland and Germany and between Sweden and Lithuania was detected, something that the authorities of these countries are investigating as alleged acts of sabotage.
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