Behind Europe’s agenda for undersea internet cables
Behind Europe’s agenda for undersea internet cables
Submarine cables account for the majority of the world's internet traffic, but as concerns over malicious actors moving to cripple or interfere with internet infrastructure increase, the European Union has a number of its own projects underway, underpinned by hidden political dynamics.
Submarine cables account for the majority of the world's internet traffic, but as concerns over malicious actors moving to cripple or interfere with internet infrastructure increase, the European Union has a number of its own projects underway, underpinned by hidden political dynamics.
Another proposal for which the EU would have available funding is the Far North Fiber, an internet cable to connect Scandinavia to Japan via the Arctic to avoid major choke points like the Suez Chanel and the South China Sea, revealed by EURACTIV last October.
Indeed, many EU countries that are not strategically placed or are landlocked have little interest in the geopolitics of internet cables. Those member states that are engaged are, more often than not, feathering their own nest.
Finland has vehemently advocated for the Arctic cable, which sees Finish company Cinia in the lead.
Yeah, the Far North Fiber one I recall reading about, and that was kind of weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_North_Fiber
That was originally going to run in the Arctic from Europe around Russia to Japan.
It sounded like they couldn't get sufficient funds, so the next proposal was apparently to run it around the world in the other direction -- north of Canada. Then IIRC they couldn't get sufficient funds for that, so tried modifying it to stop off in northern Alaska with the hopes of getting some funds from the US, and northern Canada with hopes of getting funds from Canada.
That sounded kind of unlikely to me -- there aren't many people in Alaska, especially not northern Alaska, and most of the US trans-Pacific cables ran further south, where they'd benefit a lot more people in the US. Similar situation for Canada -- not a lot of people in the far north. It might be useful to Europe, assuming that there was willingness to put the funds required up and they wanted a relatively-direct terrestrial connection to Japan, but I'm kinda dubious that there'd be a lot of potential upside for the US in putting much funding into a cable that far north, as if there was desire to subsidize a cable to Japan, the same thing could be done further south.