Connection cut: submarine data cable between Germany and Finland damaged

The C-Lion1 submarine cable between Germany and Finland is defective. According to the Finnish public broadcaster Yle, no data is currently being transmitted via the cable, which was completed in 2016. The cause of the failure is currently unknown.

C-Lion1 is operated by the Finnish company Cinia, which is majority state-owned. According to Yle, users in Finland can still access the internet without any problems despite the outage, which continues to work via other connections.

The reason for the outage is currently being investigated, a Cinia spokesperson told Yle. "Disruptions occur from time to time, and there can be various reasons for this. For example, submarine cables are susceptible to weather conditions and damage during transportation. The most important thing is that the problem is identified and remedial action is taken."

No indication of the cause

Meanwhile, Finnish media speculate whether an act of sabotage could be behind the failure. Professor of cyber security Tapio Frantti from the University of Jyväskylä expressed this view to Yle. It is likely that someone deliberately disabled the cable.

Operator Cinia did not comment on the suspicion to Yle. The company, which is 77 percent owned by the Finnish state, was also unwilling to give a concrete forecast on the duration of the repair. However, it usually takes five to 15 days to repair such cables.

C-Lion1 was put into operation in 2016. The end points of the fiber optic connection are located in Helsinki and Rostock. C-Lion1 consists of eight fiber optic pairs, each with a capacity of 15 TByte/s, which corresponds to a total bandwidth of 120 TByte/s. The cable is almost 1200 kilometers long. C-Lion1 shares 800 kilometers of the route with the Nord Stream pipeline.

(dahe)