Europe is eyeing the Arctic for a new data pipeline. A European telecommunications strategy plan, released last month, announced intentions to build an “Arctic cable hub”—which would start by connecting Greenland to mainland Europe via undersea fiber optic cables. Future fiber cables could extend the high-speed data connections toward North America and Asia.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the E.U. has made protecting its undersea cables a priority. Damage to cables in the Red Sea and suspected interference in the Baltic have highlighted key vulnerabilities in existing fiber lines connecting Europe to the rest of the world. An Arctic route could provide an alternative to existing telecommunications infrastructure. However, the alternative would only work if the new cables can be repaired when something goes wrong.
The European Commission’s new Arctic Strategy document, published in October, backs a pan-Arctic cable that would link Greenland to Europe and ultimately, potentially, Canada and Japan. The strategy document also proposes an Arctic cable hub that could monitor, protect and support repairs to subsea cables in the region.
“The bottom line is that the Arctic has become the frontline of global power competition,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, presenting the strategy on 20 October.
Installing a cable in the Arctic Ocean could require three ships: a vessel to install the cable and two icebreakers to clear a path through moving sea ice. European Commission officials interviewed by IEEE Spectrum say Europe lacks the icebreaker capacity for the pan-Arctic cable. An additional icebreaker could cost more than €200 million, sources said, with funding yet to be secured.
The icebreakers would clear an ice-free corridor for the installation ship, but smaller fragments, called brush ice, could damage the cable as it is lowered. Officials from Polar Connect, an EU-co-funded initiative for Arctic cable routes, said they are studying a mechanical guard to protect the cable from these fragments during installation, but their design is not final.
Where Would Arctic Cables Go?
EU expert recommendations identify two possible corridors: the West Arctic Passage, running between Greenland and Canada’s Arctic archipelago, and the Polar Passage, which would cross the central Arctic Ocean near the North Pole.
The cables could provide alternative routes if one is damaged, but the final route and landing points are still being considered, Commission officials said.
The EU is also funding three related cable projects: Far North Fiber, which would follow a route through the Arctic, traversing the Northwest Passage between Atlantic and Pacific oceans; Polar Connect, which would trace a central Arctic route near the North Pole; and Tusass Connect, which would link communities in Greenland. Greenland’s telecom operator Tusass did not respond to a request for comment.
Before any of these Arctic cables could be installed, detailed maps of the seabed will be needed. Polar Connect says almost 1,700 kilometers of the seabed in the Central Arctic Ocean, about 45 percent of the corridor, is mapped.
The wider Arctic Ocean remains poorly charted. Martin Jakobsson, a professor of marine geology and geophysics at Stockholm University, estimates that only 28 percent of the entire Arctic Ocean has been mapped out with sufficient data.
Ice is the main problem for researchers mapping the seabed, too, Jakobsson said. Multi-year ice, which survives at least one summer melt season and becomes thick, makes some areas difficult for research vessels to reach, he said.
“Even though the sea ice has declined overall, there are certain areas with extremely difficult sea ice, like north of Ellsmere Island [in Greenland],” he said. “Some of these areas are extremely poorly mapped; it’s blank with data.”
Jakobsson said the proposed Polar Connect route is being studied away from the densest multi-year ice north of Greenland and in Canada.
“You have to balance this [Arctic route] between what is the best route from the seabed perspective, where there are the fewest obstacles, and also where the sea ice conditions are actually even feasible to work on,” he said.
The risks also depend on water depth. Deep water routes near the North Pole are less exposed to shards of ice and icebergs that scrape the seabed than shallower routes along Arctic coastlines, according to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).
How Could Arctic Data Cable Repairs Be Done?
According to an ICPC spokesperson, a subsea cable in the Arctic faces a range of threats, including damage from fishing activity and ship anchors.
Detecting and locating a cable fault remotely is already well established and should not be particularly difficult in the Arctic, provided landing stations have the right equipment and trained staff, the spokesperson said.
The harder part would involve getting a repair vessel to the damaged area. In the Arctic, repair ships have farther to go and only a few months when ice and weather allow ships to work, the ICPC official said.
Polar Connect representatives said they are considering a repair ship built to work in icy waters, one that could be used elsewhere as well. The officials raised the additional possibility of establishing an Arctic maintenance zone.
The European Commission is separately funding a broader European repair program that includes flat-deck ships that carry modular repair equipment, to be deployed when commercial repair capacity is unavailable, officials said. The program is not specific to the Arctic.
Monitoring the Cables and Sharing the Warnings
To monitor the EU-Greenland and eventual trans-Arctic routes, the Commission is planning an Arctic Cable Hub. According to the Commission’s recent announcement, the Hub will “monitor, protect and support the repair of submarine cables in the North Atlantic-Arctic” and facilitate information sharing from the seabed to space.
The Arctic hub would join at least two more proposed cable hubs in the Baltic and the Mediterranean that are currently under way. The Mediterranean project will combine data from ships, satellites, and underwater sensors to spot potential threats. It will also help countries coordinate their response, an approach that could offer lessons for protecting cables in the Arctic, according to the tender agreement.
Commission officials said there could be difficulties sharing subsea cable monitoring information with partners outside of the EU and NATO.
That leaves Europe with a challenge: it needs to buy the vessels, build the repair capabilities and forge the international partnerships needed to keep its Arctic connections online when something goes wrong.
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