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The new system will connect the Iceland to Scotland, providing additional resilience and support for digital services
Icelandic telco Farice is planning to build a new submarine cable dubbed AUÐUR, aiming to better connect the island to European data hubs.
The AUÐUR cable system will span roughly 1,300km from Iceland’s south coast to Glasgow, Scotland, and will comprise 16–24 fibre pairs, with a capacity of up to 480 Tbps.
The system will provide a new low-latency route between Iceland and Europe‘s key network hubs, particularly with the Nordic region, which is seeing a boom of data centre investment.
Four submarine cable systems currently connect to Iceland: the Greenland Connect system, linking to Canada via Greenland; the IRIS system connecting to Ireland; DANICE, linking to Demark; and the FARICE-1 cable, which connects to the Faroe Islands and the north of Scotland.
The new AUÐUR is expected to function largely as a replacement for FARICE-1, which has been in operation since 2004 and will likely be retired over the coming years.
Source: Farice
A marine survey to plan the route in detail is expected to take place next year, with the system expected to be deployed and operational by 2030.
“The time has come to further strengthen Iceland’s telecommunications infrastructure by building a new high-capacity cable. Through the new cable we will create a new low latency route between Iceland and Europe’s key network hubs as well and further strengthen the digital bridge within the Nordics. Icelandic data centres can be seamlessly integrated into network topologies, bridging the US and Nordic markets. The Nordic region is rapidly emerging as a major data centre hub, making interconnectivity with the Nordics ever more important,” said Thorvardur Sveinsson, CEO of Farice.
The cable is named for Auður the Deep-Minded (Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir), a setter who sailed from Scotland to Iceland in the 9th century.
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