The customer did not give an address, but GPS coordinates. A crew of technicians leaves Calais (Pas-de-Calais), Thursday November 21, to repair the fiber in the Swedish sea, franceinfo learned from corroborating sources. THE Cable Vigilancea French-flagged cable ship, was tasked with restoring the C-Lion1, an underwater telecommunications infrastructure which suffered a rupture – likely caused by a third party – causing a breakdown on this cable which connects Finland to the 'Germany. The mission will be carried out off the Swedish island of Öland, explains the Finnish operator Cinia in a press release.
The ship will have to transport the necessary equipment for the repair at sea and the final preparations were carried out in haste, on the eve of departure. “We are talking about fifty meters deep”explains to franceinfo the French company Alcatel Submarine Networks, which operates the boat. The latter did not wish to communicate further details on this mission, considered confidential. “We avoid being too verbose about the position of our crews and our ships, for obvious security reasons.”
However, the cable maker is accustomed to these types of operations. “The ends of the damaged cables are recovered with a grappling hook”but the ship is also equipped with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). “We then have to carry out tailoring work, since we have to put back part of the cable and resolder each of the optical fibers to each other – which is why they are colored – before properly waterproofing everything.” The protocol is “relatively standard, and that is why there are agreements and consortia in the different maritime zones”so that different actors can intervene if necessary.
The Cable Vigilance had just returned from a mission in the south of Ireland alongside another cable ship, Ile-de-Batzrecently reported The Telegramas part of the Celtic Interconnector electricity link between Brittany and Ireland. This ship built in 2006 was converted into a cable ship in 2022. Owned by the Malaysian OMS group, it is managed by the Louis-Dreyfus Armateurs group and operates in partnership with Alcatel Submarine Networks within the Atlantique Private Maintenance Agreement.
This summer, the French state acquired 80% of the capital of this company from the Finnish Nokia, deeming this activity strategic, at a time when geopolitical tensions are increasing around major infrastructures. Previously, the submarine cable laying specialist fell into the hands of the Finnish group in 2015, during the sale of the entire Alcatel group.
The operator Cinia, which operates the cable, estimated “the repair time between five and fifteen days”which is the typical time frame for repairing submarine cables. “We are on the basis of what is most normalconfirme Alcatel Submarine Networks. Because there are always deadlines that cannot be reduced, the time to have the equipment and the time to go on site.”
The infrastructure was severed at its mid-length, explained Cinia, in a “sector far from maritime traffic” located in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden. The operator did not specify the exact nature of the damage. This is not the only infrastructure affected in recent days. Another submarine telecommunications cable, linking Sweden to Lithuania, was damaged on Sunday, the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense told AFP on Tuesday, confirming information from the Swedish telecommunications company Telia.
After the rupture of the two cables in the Baltic Sea, the Danish defense forces announced that they were following a Chinese boat, the Yi Peng 3the day after the opening of investigations in Sweden and Finland for “sabotage”. “We are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3“wrote the Danish Defense, without immediately providing further details. A Danish ship, the P525was still nearby on Wednesday afternoon, according to the tracking site VesselFinder.
