Cinia Ltd. from Finland and ARTERIA Networks Corp. of Japan say the latter has joined the Far North Fiber submarine cable project. The subsea cable will connect Europe and Asia through the Arctic. ARTERIA will be the main Japanese partner for the effort.
Far North Fiber, announced late last year, will run from Japan, via the Northwest Passage, to Europe. It will land in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, with European landings planned in Norway, Finland, and Ireland (see “Cinia, Far North Digital plan pan-Arctic submarine cable from Japan to Europe via Northwest Passage”). The 14,000-km fiber cable’s route will be engineered to minimize the latency of transmissions between Asia and Europe.
Alcatel Submarine Networks will serve as main engineering, procurement, and construction partner for the submarine network, which is expected to be ready for service by the end of 2025. Cinia pegs the cost of the effort at approximately 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion).
"The Far North Fiber project is an epoch-making project to build the last remaining submarine cable route connecting Europe with Japan and Asia at the lowest latency and will greatly contribute to the further development of the digital infrastructure environment in Japan regions such as Hokkaido,” commented Koji Kabumoto, representative director, president and CEO of ARTERIA, which is a subsidiary of Marubeni Corp. “In addition, the new international network realized by the Far North Fiber will be able to create new demand for connectivity in a wide range of fields such as industry, academia, and culture in Europe, Japan, and Asia."
“Far North Fiber will be the first multicontinental cable system and the first Pan-Arctic system. First of its kind very often causes a paradigm shift. Cinia is very pleased to have all three continents represented in the development team, and I warmly welcome ARTERIA to join the project with Cinia and Far North Digital,” added Ari-Jussi Knaapila CEO of Cinia.
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