N0R5KE VIKING PROJECT

This project is building a hybrid terrestrial-subsea network for Norway. The subsea portion is designed to link Norwegian cities on the West Coast. Building terrestrially between these cities is very expensive unless existing conduit is used. So the only cost effective approach to provide a route diverse to existing telecom rights of way is to go underwater. All Viking routes are 86 fibre pairs. The terrestrial routes connect not only the country's key telecom hotels, but also many of the major hyperscaler facilities as well as all of the cable landing stations. The Far North segment is for NATO and the Norwegian military. Norway shares a border with Mother Russia. 

Viking's sales policy is to avoid the high overhead associated with lit services such as wavelengths. So only dark fibre will be leased or sold as IRUs. Dark fibre providers have very low operating costs. They can be run on a skelton crew. Fibre repair is always outsource to third parties. Simple devices can be installed to continuously test transmission quality. Loss of light triggers automated alarms. I believe the subsea segments are unrepeatered given the short distances involved. But I don't have confirmation.

Norway is getting a lot of hyperscaler attention due to its abundance of zero CO2 emission hydro resources. Also the cool climate reduces the need for active cooling. I believe the hyperscaler focus will be AI model estimation that is relatively immune to latency penalties.

What are this project's challenges? Permitting is one. But the hyperscaler's themselves are pretty damn frugal. They will want IRUs whose price reflects cost without a substantial markup. Generally OTTs pay between 90% and 110% of construction costs. Not a great rate of return! My impression is that the highest return on dark fibre is achieved on leases.