Nordic Outlook

By Dag Aanensen
January 19, 2020

The Nordics is becoming a prominent player in the datacenter market. Thanks to its role as a power hub for Europe, low temperatures, easiness of doing business and political and economic stability the Nordics is providing the ideal climate to build new datacenters. Several new submarine fiber optic systems where installed during 2019. With landing points in all the Nordic countries. All systems are providing a shorter route for time sensitive data and adding robustness to the datacenter industry.

The Nordic people are high internet users and very data innovative. For internet gamers the new international submarine cable connections will reduce the latency to and from the Nordics. Every millisecond counts. This year Google will launch a new online network game which will require access to large amount of data streaming on the internet for the Nordic market. The need for robust redundant low latency continues to grow into the next decade of business climate.

A total investment of $372 MUSD is expected in new submarine cable systems during a three-year period. The new submarine cable will add 122 new dark fiber pairs to the Norwegian coastline and 144 new dark fiber pairs intra Nordic.

Nordic highlights – 2019  

The AEC-2 submarine cable system (Havfrue Consortium) is under construction and is expected completed in Q120 with ready for service by middle of 2020. Via the Havfrue cable, Norway and Denmark are directly connected with Ireland and the US East Coast. The North Sea Connect connecting Newcastle with Esbjerg is also under construction with expected RFS mid 2020. Tampnet installed a new sea cable connecting West coast of Norway with two oil platforms providing fiber redundancy for both Yme and Ula in the North sea. A new multiple fiber cable was installed further from Yme with final landing point in Aberdeen. EasternLight completed their first new fiber optic sea cable system between Stockholm and Helsinki. BKK Digitek Norway installed a regional submarine cable between Bergen and Stavanger providing multiple fiber pairs to the new England Cable to terminate in Stavanger.

To continue reading the rest of this article, please read it in Issue 110 of the SubTel Forum magazine here on page 48.