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Fenno-German 'Sea Lion' Telecom Cable Laying Begins (yle.fi)
jones_supa writes: A couple of years ago, details began to unfold of a government-backed high capacity data cable between Germany and Finland, which would be routed through the Baltic Sea. The cable has now been nicknamed "Sea Lion," and the work started Monday in Santahamina coastal area, outside Helsinki. The cable was built by Alcatel Lucent and is operated by the Finnish firm Cinia Group. The Finnish government, along with the banking and insurance sector, have together invested €100M into the project. That investment is expected to pay for itself many times over once the business sector gets a boost from the new telecom jump. The new cable also makes Finland independent of the Øresund Bridge, through which all of the country's Internet traffic is currently routed, via Denmark and Sweden. Eventually the new link can reach Asia as well, via the Northeast Passage shipping route.
Um, no. The cable being laid at the moment goes from Finland to Germany. A Northeast Passage cable would go from the other end of Finland, along the Russian coast to Japan.
When plans for the undersea link to Germany were unveiled last year, he [the minister] mused that it could one day be hooked up via Finland to another that could run under the Northeast Passage - providing a superfast data route to Asia.
Conceded, more than a data center owner, but "mused" and "one day" doesn't exactly sound like they've finalized their plans.
And another company working on undersea cables in the Arctic (working on a route from Europe via Canada to Asia) has its doubts:
The route above Russia is too long a route with little or no commercial demand. No financing would be available and there are too many ice scour issues in East Siberian Sea to make this route preferable over the Northwest Passage route.