Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Helsinki to dismantle cross-border power poles carrying key fiber-optic lines, leaving Russian web providers scrambling to avoid major network bottlenecks.
Few people think about international internet cables.
High-voltage electricity towers stretching across quiet frontier forests often double as vital digital lifelines connecting entire nations.
But when those physical networks get severed, the digital world must adapt quickly.
Towers coming down
Finnish grid operator Fingrid has officially notified Russian telecom companies that it will stop servicing the power transmission towers carrying cross-border fiber-optic lines starting in 2027.
Industry insiders confirmed the upcoming shutdown to Russian business daily Kommersant, with one source explaining that “the cable will be cut and the poles dismantled.”
The shutdown stems directly from political and economic shifts following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Once Russian electricity exports to Finland ground to a complete halt, maintaining massive steel power towers purely for internet cables became financially impossible for both sides.
Looking for workarounds
Russia now faces a logistical hurdle. Since 2022, between 60 and 70 percent of Russia’s international web traffic has transited directly through Finland.
Power lines carry up to 30 percent of all communication links between the two countries, leaving network operators facing a sudden capacity gap.
Russian telecom providers are already negotiating replacement routes with private Finnish tech firms. Market sources told Kommersant that “no one expects this to affect traffic for Russian subscribers,” pointing to alternative pathways.
Slower web speeds
Redundant routes still exist. Data can still travel across railway networks, through Belarus and the Baltic states, or along undersea cables resting on the floor of the Baltic Sea.
Still, cutting direct channels inevitably weakens overall system backup options. Anton Prokopenko, product director at network analytics firm Vigo, warned that diverting huge volumes of data could trigger bottlenecks during peak hours.
If alternative routes cannot absorb the extra load, users in northwestern Russia may experience latency spikes when loading foreign websites.
