There are breaks in the cable in two places in the Estonian economic zone, says Anders Wallinder, head of the department for emergency preparedness and security protection at PTS, to TT.
According to PTS, the cable belongs to the Swedish-owned company Arelion. The outages are not expected to have any impact on Swedish customers.
But redundancy is lost, so there will be less room for maneuver in the future if something else were to fail.
Arelion: Two cables
The announcement comes as Finnish media reports that a data communications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn has been damaged in the Gulf of Finland. A ship suspected of being behind the incident has been seized by Finnish authorities.
Does PTS see any connection?
We cannot say that, but we note that they are happening at the same time, says Anders Wallinder.
Arelion states in an email to TT that two of its submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30 and the second on December 31.
"We are actively working with authorities in Sweden and other countries to investigate the cause of the damage. We cannot provide any details about exact times or locations at this time due to the ongoing investigation," writes Martin Sjögren, press officer at Arelion.
Automatically redirected
The company plans to start repair work on the cables as soon as possible and they could be completed within a few days depending on weather conditions.
"In an event like this, traffic is automatically redirected to other routes in our network, which means that the vast majority of customers are not affected by the cable breaks," writes Martin Sjögren at Arelion.
