Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The EU recently gave 6 million Euros to the Northern European Polar Connect Initiative which aims to build a subsea cable connecting Japan to Europe via the Far North. See the map below for routing. NorduNet is a network linking universities and research organizations in the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. It is taking the lead on this project which is looking at two alternatives routes to reach Asia. One route would be via the North Pole and the other via the Northwest Passage. This would give Europe access to Asia without traversing the US or Canada and hence offer better privacy and more secure communication as well much lower latency. Because the proposed paths are highly diverse to the usual suspects of Atlantic cables landing in Canada or the US, they might be attractive for resiliency purposes. One can imagine carriers splitting their traffic between the Polar routes and the more traditional cross-US routes for Pacific/European traffic. C...