European Subsea Cable Association Gently Rebukes Hysteria Surrounding Baltic Sea Outages

"Two subsea cables located in the Baltic Sea have recently reported faults. BCS East-West cable reportedly experienced a fault at 08:00 on Sunday 17th November and the C-Lion cable reportedly experienced a fault at 02:00 on Monday 18th November (times UTC). 

There has been speculation and opinion shared on social media and from news outlets as to the causes of these two subsea cable faults. Many commentators have pointed towards deliberate action. However, at this stage there is no evidence to make any conclusive statement.

Particularly since the Nord Stream Pipeline was damaged in 2022, the security of critical undersea infrastructure has been a central topic of discussion, and action, for both industry and government.

For these and future incidents it is prudent to consider the following:

-       The primary causes of cable damage in Northern European waters are commercial fishing or ship anchors, with a smaller proportion of faults caused by natural hazards (seafloor currents, storms, submarine landslides, sediment flows etc).

-       Subsea cables are protected as much as possible through burial beneath the seabed, armouring, and careful route design to avoid predicted hazards, but it is not always possible to avoid damage and cable repairs are not uncommon.

-       The cause of a fault can rarely be attributed instantly as a cable repair ship will take several days to attend the location of the damage. Physical inspection of the cable & the seabed is typically required to give a good indication of the cause.

-       When a cable experiences a fault, engineers will perform tests on the cable that will give them a distance along the cable to the fault, and with their records they will be able to calculate geographical fault position.

-       Investigations can be undertaken using tools such as vessel tracking AIS (Automatic Identification System), to see if there were any vessels at the fault location at the time it was damaged. This does not necessarily indicate whether the cause was accidental or intentional.

-       Subsea cable damage is not rare. On average, a subsea cable is damaged somewhere in the world every three days, with estimates of around 150-200 cable faults occurring each year.

-       Damaging just one, or even two, cables will rarely cause significant disruption of service and customers in the area affected are unlikely to notice any impact. Cable operators build diversity & redundancy in their networks specifically to mitigate for these sorts of occurrences.

Speculation on the cause of fault at a very early stage can lead to misinformation being shared. Most cable faults are not reported in the media, however, when they are reported before the facts are available, such speculation often leads to unhelpful and premature conclusions being drawn about the cause of cable damage.