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Norway to Wire North Pole
TomMajor writes "Norway will lay an underwater fiber-optic cable from the mainland to Svalbard and turn remote Longyearbyen into the world's best connected village, providing residents with 100 TV stations and a full VDSL (very high bit-rate DSL) network..."
If I remember correctly the Norse doesnt use their oil money. They put it in a big pile for when the oil runs out..
*You are not allowed to read this*
The idea is NOT to necessarily make this the best wired remote village, it's to BACKHAUL data from the satellite station that's located there. (If you read the story this becomes blatantly obvious).
Providing connectivity for the village is just a (happy) side effect. I mean, did anyone really believe the Norweigan's were spending USD$40m to provide connectivity to 1700 people?
-psy
Longyearbyen , town and administrative center of Svalbard, on Isfjorden, Spitsbergen island. It is a coal-mining settlement, founded (1905) by an American company and named after the American miner J. M. Longyear. Its coal mines were transferred to a Norwegian company in 1916. It was destroyed (Sept., 1943) by German battleships but was quickly rebuilt.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Svalbard is almost at the North Pole. I believe it is actually as close to the North Pole as anyone permenantly lives (ie closer than anyone gets except on expeditions).
Yep, and "byen" in Longyearbyen is the word for "city" or "town" in norwegian. So it sort of means "The Longyear Town", directly translated.