Arctic Fibre continues its quest for a fibre optic undersea cable

October 31, 2012

Arctic Fibre Inc.seeks to raise $600M for an undersea fibre optic cable from UK to Japan through the northwest passage

The fibre line would stretch for 15,000 kms with two spur lines - one into Hudson’s Bay and one along the eastern shore of Baffin Island. The capacity would be 32 terabits per second (~ 1.6 billion simultaneous phone calls). A big attraction for using the line would be faster telecommunications since the line is much shorter than other lines, eliminating 29 milliseconds of latency.

Formal application for landing licence filed with Industry Canada on October 2, 2012. The line would be completed by 2014.

Arctic Fibre would not sell directly to consumers. It would market wholesale bandwidth to telecom providers who would sell to consumers.

Arctic Fibre is privately held, not listed on the market.

Commentary

The key question is whether the company can raise $600M. It would be great for the north to see the project succeed as most arctic communities are now connected through satellite.

Sources

• a)Rita Trichur "The Golden opportunity under the shrinking Arctic ice", Globe and Mail, 29-Oct-2012, p.B3.



• b)http://arcticfibre.com/?p=634