Arctic telecom cable initiative takes major step forward

7th June 2019

Cinia

Alex Lynn

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The leading partner of the Cinia alliance, Cinia, along with MegaFon have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up a joint venture to prepare the build of a submarine telecommunications cable across the Arctic Sea. The widely international project would create a completely new route to connect continents and also to fulfil connectivity requirements of the Arctic region.

The Cinia alliance in this phase consists of Japanese and Nordic partners and an international investment bank. The main objective of the MoU is to establish the Development Company by Q4/2019.

The global economy increasingly depends on international networks and logistics systems. The Arctic cable will increase the redundancy of the global networks significantly by providing a totally new route.

The Arctic cable will offer the lowest-latency sea route between Europe and northern Asia thanks to the shortest geographical route and the most sophisticated technology.

“The Arctic cable will contribute to the socio-economic development of the Arctic areas. The cable is an environmentally sustainable way to boost global, regional and local economy. At the same time, the cable will connect three continents, covering approximately 85 per cent of the world’s population,” said Ari-Jussi Knaapila, CEO of Cinia.

Gevork Vermishyan, CEO of MegaFon, added: "MegaFon is proud to join a major international infrastructure project that will not only connect several continents via the Arctic but also will benefit MegaFon as a leader of digital opportunities by enabling the development of network infrastructure for customers in the Arctic region and the Far East.”

Today the global submarine cable networks provide over 99% of international telecommunications. The new 10,000km of the Arctic route will offer an optimal combination of low latency, physical diversity and high network availability. Currently, the global network backbone is lacking an optical submarine cable that connects Europe, coastal regions of Russia, Japan and North America.

Cinia has already carried out the construction of 1,200 km of C-Lion1 submarine cable from Germany to Finland and has thus proven its ability to lead and execute demanding international submarine initiatives.

MegaFon has previous experience in the construction and operation of high-speed fibre optic cable networks in Russia and the neighbouring countries, with the total length of its own fibre optic cable network exceeding 200,000km.