Running a cable from London to Tokyo was, for a very long time, impossible: The sea route was solid ice year-round. Now, thanks to rising temperatures, the ice disappears from August to October, and a startup wants to thread a 10,000-mile cable through the gap.
Toronto-based Arctic Fibre will soon start surveying the underwater route that would connect the UK with Japan and several spots in between, diversifying the globe’s fibre optic data network without relying on land-based cables going through volatile regions of the Middle East, as current connections do. Similar projects, on a much smaller scale, have recently been completed to connect Russia and Crimea.
As BuzzFeed reports, telecoms and corporations are clamouring for redundant data connections, still wary of the trouble caused in 2008 when disruptions to the Mediterranean Sea cable slowed or stopped communications across Asia. But routes through the Middle East could make tempting targets for disruption.