Europe Considers Arctic Cable to Avoid Red Sea Internet Choke Point

The vast majority of the world's data, including emails, financial transactions and internet traffic, travels via fiber optic cables laid along the ocean floor. These cables converge at a small number of narrow geographic choke points. Policymakers have periodically noted the potential risks of this arrangement, though the routes remain the shortest available and have been in use in some cases since the telegraph era.

Cables are severed on a regular basis, with traffic rerouted until specialized repair ships can recover the ends from the seafloor, splice the fibers and restore service. The process requires calm conditions and cannot be performed safely in active conflict zones.

Disruptions in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have prompted governments and companies to examine alternate paths, including one across the Arctic. The current difficulties began in 2024 when a Houthi missile struck a cargo ship in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen.

The drifting vessel dragged its anchor across three submarine cables in the narrow passage. Repair of those cables took more than four months because agreements had to be negotiated to allow a repair ship into the area. That incident also required months of negotiations before repairs could be completed.

Sea outages occurred, traffic shifted toward the Persian Gulf. Subsequent developments in Iran have halted cable projects there. Roderick Beck, a cable industry veteran who sources telecom capacity for internet service providers, said the Persian Gulf will never go back to what it was before.

Gulf states have been expanding data centers to support artificial intelligence as they diversify from oil. Some are now pursuing overland routes to Europe through Syria, Iraq and Oman. In Europe, attention has turned to the Arctic. An EU panel on cable resilience recommended earlier this year that two Arctic cables be built to reach Asia without traversing the Red Sea, where 90 percent of Europe's traffic currently passes.

One route would use Canada's Northwest Passage. The other would cross directly over the North Pole to link Scandinavia with Asia.

The North Pole route is in early planning under the name Polar Connect. It is being developed by Nordic academic network operators, Sweden’s polar research agency and the telecom company GlobalConnect Carrier. The full cost is estimated at around 2 billion euros.

A route survey is scheduled for this summer. Pär Jansson, Senior Vice President for Carrier services at GlobalConnect, said the project began before recent regional unrest but that the geopolitical situation has increased interest in alternate routes.

Europe's data currently reaches Asia through three routes, none ideal: the Red Sea, Russia or the United States, described in project documents as a long route controlled by non-European entities. The cable would improve resilience, reduce latency between Europe and Asia, strengthen Europe’s autonomy and enable better environmental monitoring of the Arctic, Jansson said.

Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, said the topic has been discussed for at least 20 years. Installation would require modifying a cable ship for Arctic conditions and using icebreakers for escort. Maintenance presents the larger obstacle.

Ice scour, in which icebergs drag along the seafloor and create deep grooves, can damage cables buried at normal depths. Repairs cannot be carried out during winter ice cover. The previous project, Quintillion, activated a segment from Nome along Alaska’s northern coast to Prudhoe Bay.

Sea ice broke the cable in June 2023, requiring a wait until summer for repair. Another iceberg strike occurred in January 2024, leaving the cable out of service for eight months. Jansson acknowledged the difficulties but said new geopolitical conditions and technologies could make the project feasible.

Tech companies are building data centers in Nordic countries and will require fast, resilient connections. The Norway-to-Japan segment is now estimated to cost below 1 billion euros, with a target completion date of 2030.