The EU will lay a fiber optic cable through the Arctic for data exchange with Japan

The European Union is beginning to allocate funding for the laying of a new fiber optic cable called Far North Fiber, which will connect the EU countries with Japan through the Arctic.

Stefan Kramer, advisor on digital policy at the EU representation in Japan, said this in a comment to the Japanese NHK.

According to him, financing for the project will amount to more than 3 million euros, and companies from Japan, the USA and Finland will participate in its implementation.

As Reuters reported, at the first stages they wanted to involve the Russian company MegaFon in the project and lay a cable along the Arctic coast of Russia. However, in 2021, the idea was abandoned – due to the fact that Russia did not want to give permission for laying the cable through its territorial waters, and subsequently the geopolitical situation changed radically.

The cable will run across the North American part of the Arctic Ocean, connecting northern Finland and Norway with Alaska, as well as the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. On the maps you can see a branch also to Ireland.

Far North Fiber notes that there are currently three cables for data transmission between Japan and Europe: one through the Pacific Ocean, the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean, and the second through the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Another one runs through the territory of Russia.

According to the project, the new cable should provide data transmission 20% faster than routes across the Pacific Ocean and the Middle East.

The survey of the laying route should be completed by 2024, the approximate completion of construction is planned for 2026.

As a reminder, the public broadcasters of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, based on the conclusions of a joint investigation, assume that Russian warships and civilian “ghost ships” in the Baltic and North Seas collect data for sabotage against wind power plants, gas pipelines and communication cables.

March 16, NATO and the EU held the first meetingdedicated to the establishment of a new Task Force on Critical Infrastructure Resilience Against the Background of the Russian Threat.