Finland to stop maintaining poles carrying communication lines with Russia, Kommersant reports

The Finnish energy company Fingrid has told Russian telecom operators it will stop maintaining the power line poles that carry fiber-optic communication lines starting in 2027, sources told the Russian business daily Kommersant.One of the sources said “the cable will be cut and the poles dismantled.” Maintaining the poles solely for telecom operators became unprofitable for both Fingrid and Rosseti after Russia halted electricity supplies to Finland in 2022, another source explained. Russia stopped supplying electricity to Finland because of a halt in payments.According to the newspaper’s sources, about 60–70% of foreign traffic has routed through Finland since 2022, and power lines carry up to 30% of all communication lines with Finland.Russian operators are now discussing alternative routes with Finnish telecom companies. One source said “no one expects this to affect traffic for Russian subscribers.”But experts say halting some of these backbone communication lines to Finland could hurt the quality of telecom services in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District.The change could also increase the load on the remaining lines, slowing connections to foreign resources for users in the European part of Russia.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.