Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#2I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#3I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
Yes, Absolutely. A handful of years ago sailing through the North West Passage (around Alaska then across above Canada) was unheard of. Now it's quite routine, lots of people do it for fun every summer.
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#4I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
Probably, Russia are also building the "Polar Express" subsea cable from Murmansk to Vladivostok around Siberia so I guess is it viable now.
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#5I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
I vaguely remember reading that there were shipping routes that would be half the time and distance if the ice was melted... And some ships run during the summer months... Mostly from Russia to Europe... Iirc...
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#6For anyone curious, there's an image of the route in this article: https://www.aroged.com/2021/12/24/far-north-digital-and-cini...
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#7I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
Also - totally unrealistic - but what if the ice freezed again, making the cables impermeable to spying and ushering in some kind of golden era of diplomacy and trust. I remember reading that in times when technology favored defense there were widespread moments of peace throughout Europe, like in the Middle Ages, so this could be something like that.
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#8By how much will it improve latency between EU and Asia? or US and Asia?
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#9I wonder if melting ice is making this easier to do or more economically feasible than it has been in the past?
Also - totally unrealistic - but what if the ice freezed again, making the cables impermeable to spying and ushering in some kind of golden era of diplomacy and trust. I remember reading that in times when technology favored defense there were widespread moments of peace throughout Europe, like in the Middle Ages, so this could be something like that.
> but what if the ice freezed again, making the cables impermeable to spying and ushering in some kind of golden era of diplomacy and trust.
It would make no difference: subsea cables are accessed via submarine, which don't care about ice (or no ice).
* https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th...
* https://www.lawfareblog.com/evaluating-russian-threat-unders...
* https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/we-now-have-details-u...
Re: Subsea Cable to Connect Asia, Europe, and North America Through the Arctic
#10By how much will it improve latency between EU and Asia? or US and Asia?
US to Asia will be literally a backup routing, since that the best routes between Japan and western US coast are already continuously constructed and maintained. EU and Japan would be godsend, the best direct link would be through China, which is politically and practically (even with the best of diplomatic relations, terrestrial cable linking is much more complicated due to mountains, rivers and other obstacles) impossible. Although there's an EU-Hong Kong terrestrial link operated by RETN, it's a relatively low-bandwidth link compared to the aggregate of all Japan-Singapore-Marseille links, so if this a high-bandwidth link it'll be a boon.