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POLAR REGION
9.7.1 CURRENT SYSTEMS
The first true Polar submarine fiber system in industry history was installed in 2017. Previous systems, such as Svalbard, had only ever brushed the Polar region. At 1,200 kilometers over six landing points, Quintillion Subsea marked the first successful and fully Polar submarine fiber system in the world.
Interest in Polar projects has been at an all-time high the past few years, as cable developers are looking to take advantage of the dramatically shorter routes between Europe, North America and Asia that can be achieved through the Polar Circle. The Quintillion Subsea system has proven that a fully Polar system can be done for future systems that look to tackle this particularly difficult region. (Figure 97)
Polar systems have particular challenges to overcome during their development cycle, and only have small windows of time throughout the year during which work can be accomplished. This both extends the development timeline and increases the cost.
9.7.2 FUTURE SYSTEMS
These systems are focused on routes in the far north of Canada, linking up local communities or bridging the gap between Europe and Asia. Far North Fiber is an attempt to link Europe to Japan and points in between by going over the top of Russia.
One of the main goals for Polar systems connecting Europe to Asia is to dramatically reduce existing latency. Currently, data must either go through the United States, or through the Suez Canal an d Indian Ocean. This has required systems totaling at least 20,000 kilometers in the past. However, future Europe to Asia Polar routes is planned for about 14,000 kilometers — poten- tially cutting latency by almost half. Additionally, systems exploring Polar routes avoid the troubled Middle East region and circumvent potential privacy concerns in the United States. (Figure 98)
TABLE 17: POLAR 2010-PRESENT
Of the three systems planned for the Polar region through 2025, none have achieved the CIF milestone. This speaks to the difficulty of Polar projects in general, and the inherently risky and more costly investment opportunities they represent. As this region is still largely being explored in general, there is hope that continued efforts can finally break the ice so to speak and allow for a consistent way to implement projects throughout the Polar region.
Looking beyond 2025, there is a project in the very early exploration stage that looks to connect South America or New Zealand to research bases in Antarctica. As this will more than likely be a government backed infrastructure project, it should have a much better chance of succeeding as commercial viability concerns do not apply. Connecting Antarctic research stations to high capacity, low latency fiber telecoms would be a huge boon to ongoing scientific efforts in the area and allow for much better collaboration and information sharing.
