Not China: Taiwan blames ‘natural wear and tear’ for latest undersea internet cable outages

Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Technology has revealed the reason for the outage of two undersea Internet cables leading to the Mazu Islands, which were cut off on the morning of January 22. According to officials, “natural wear and tear” is to blame, Reuters reports. Since the beginning of the year, there have already been four failures in the operation of the island’s underwater Internet infrastructure, while only three incidents were recorded in the previous two years.

The Matsu Islands, with a population of about 14 thousand people, are located off the coast of mainland China and to provide them with Internet access, it was necessary to activate backup communications, including wireless ones. A similar incident occurred in early January, but then Taiwanese authorities blamed China. In this case, no suspicious vessels were noticed near the cable at the time of the loss of communication. The cables are expected to be restored by the end of next month.

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In 2023, a Chinese ship was accused of damaging the Taiwan-Matsu No. 2. In early January 2025, four optical fibers of a cable operated by Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom were cut off the coast of Taiwan. The cable is believed to have been damaged by the Cameroon-registered ship Shunxin 39, which was sailing from the Taiwanese port of Keelung to South Korea.

In November 2024, the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3 was suspected of deliberately damaging the C-Lion1 and BCS East-West cables in the Baltic Sea. At the end of December of the same year, the Eagle S vessel damaged several Internet cables and one power cable in the Baltic. The cause of the incident was said to be the low qualifications of the crew. However, NATO countries have announced a new defense initiative in the Baltic Sea to protect underwater infrastructure. Sweden has already allocated three ships and an aircraft for this, and Germany has launched an underwater patrol drone into the sea.