Submarine cable C-Lion 1: Third damage in quick succession

The German-Finnish submarine data cable C-Lion 1 has been damaged again, according to Swedish authorities. The cable connection, which runs through the Baltic Sea, was damaged this time off the island of Gotland, reported the Swedish television station SVT, citing the cable company Cinia, the police and the coastguard. Unlike previous damage, however, there was no outage this time, a Cinia spokesperson told the news agency Reuters.

This is the third time in just a few months that the submarine cable has been damaged. Previous damage in November and December even led to an interruption and shutdown of the data connection. Police and other investigating authorities are looking into the matter. It cannot yet be ruled out that the damage may be older. There were already suspicions that the first case of damage could have been an act of sabotage by Russia.

Was it an act of sabotage?

However, according to media reports, Finland's Interior Minister Mari Rantanen does not believe it was a coincidence: "This has happened so often now that the probability that it was a mistake is pretty low," she is quoted as saying by the Finnish publication yle.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson explained on X that he had been informed about the damage to the submarine cable. "We take all reports of possible damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea very seriously. As I said before, they must be seen in the light of the serious security situation."

End point in Rostock

C-Lion 1 has a length of 1173 kilometers and was put into operation in 2016. It connects Central European telecommunications networks with Finland and the Nordic countries. The majority owner of the operating company Cinia is the Finnish state.

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 Tbps, which corresponds to a total bandwidth of 120 Tbps.

(mki)