A fibre-optic cable connecting Finland and Sweden was damaged on Monday, causing a major outage in Finland.

GlobalConnect, a digital infrastructure provider, said on its website that the damage appears to have occurred on Monday afternoon in two separate places, and that repair work was ongoing as of Tuesday morning.

It also noted that the damaged cable was located on land, and no sea cables were affected.

Swedish media, including public broadcaster SVT and daily newspaper Aftonbladet, reported that Finnish police suspect a criminal offence has taken place in relation to the damaged cable, and Swedish authorities have been informed of the ongoing investigation.

However, Finnish police said later on Tuesday that no criminal investigation has been launched, and currently no crime in relation to the damage is suspected to have taken place.

Earlier on Tuesday, Finland’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Lulu Ranne (Finns), confirmed in a post on social media platform X that authorities were probing the damage.

“The authorities are investigating the matter together with the company. We take the situation seriously,” Ranne wrote.

Niklas Ekström, communications manager at GlobalConnect, told Yle that the cable was damaged at two points in rural areas between Espoo and Vihti.

He did not wish to comment on what may have caused the damage.

Monday’s cable break comes in the wake of similar incidents in November, when two separate cables in the Baltic Sea were cut.

Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is probing the damage to the C-Lion1 submarine cable between Finland and Germany as suspected cases of aggravated damage to property and aggravated interference with telecommunications.

A day before the Finland-Germany data link was cut, a similar cable linking Sweden and Lithuania was also damaged, according to Cinia, the majority-state-owned owner of the Finland-Germany cable.

Both cables have since been repaired.

© 2024 YLE