Finland does not have reason to suspect that the breach of two separate land-based fibre-optic cables was an act of crime, police said on Tuesday, as authorities and owners work to establish the exact cause of the outages.
Nordic telecoms groups GlobalConnect and Elisa said one of the two breaches that occurred on Monday was likely due to excavation work. GlobalConnect is still investigating the second incident.
Finnish police are seeking to establish what happened but have not opened a criminal investigation at this stage.
"Based on the current information, we don't have reason to suspect a crime in this case," Inspector Teemu Saukoniemi of the National Police Board of Finland told Reuters.
One of the cables had been repaired by Tuesday morning.
The disruption followed recent breaches of two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, which raised suspicions of potential sabotage.
"The authorities are investigating the matter together with the company. We take the situation seriously," Finland's Minister of Transport and Communications Lulu Ranne said in a post on social media X.
The breaches happened on a connection that links Finland and Sweden, a spokesperson for the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority said.
"Due to the circumstances surrounding what happened, sabotage is suspected," Swedish Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said in a statement.
Reuters
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