New submarine fibre optic project will connect five European countries

The high-capacity, 1400 km repeatered submarine fibre optic project was announced at the Submarine Networks EMEA Conference in London this week, and it promises to support ‘critical infrastructure security with full armouring and burial’ as it links the five Northern European countries.

It will be the first submarine fibre optic cable landing on the North Sea shores of Germany in over 25 years, we’re told, and after decommissioning of TAT-14, SEA-ME-WE 3 and others, it will also be the only cable system connecting Germany to the submarine cable networks in the North Sea and beyond. The 48-fibre pair system promises a minimum overall capacity of 1.3 Pb/s.

In its entirety, the cable system consists of a trunk route connecting Dumpton Gap in the UK with Kristiansand in Norway. Three branches then connect Eemshaven in the Netherlands, Wilhelmshaven in Germany and Blaabjerg in Denmark, and it also connects with ‘vital transatlantic crossings’ Havfrue (DK), Leif Erikson (NO) and other planned cables.

The project company, IOEMA Fibre, was founded last year and it is working with a number of other infrastructure firms to hook up the new cable system. Bulk Fibre Networks is acting as a landing party in Norway, handling the connectivity to the N01 Data Centre and further on towards Oslo, and Arelion will be the provider for the shores of Denmark in the ex-TAT-14 cable landing station, as well as laying further connectivity towards Esbjerg and Copenhagen.

EWE TEL GmbH and Relined Fiber Network are joint landing partners in Germany, while Eurofiber and QTS are the landing parties in Eemshaven, The Netherlands, and Colt Technology Services will connect the landing point in Dumpton Gap.

“After 5 years of development and observing the market in Northern Europe, it became evident that diverse routes are needed to provide the redundancy for the increasing data demand in the Nordics,” said Eckhard Bruckschen, CTO of IOEMA Fibre. “We are proud to start this project together with our landing partners and provide further connectivity across Europe and beyond.”

Annette Murphy, Chief Commercial Officer, Colt Technology Services added: “By increasing capacity, performance, and resilience across Northern Europe, the IOEMA project will have a profound impact on digital connectivity for this region and beyond. We’re excited and honoured to be playing a key role in bringing this ambitious vision to reality.”

All the other partners got canned quotes in the release, and the main sentiments from them are that the project will meet a growing need for backhaul capacity and generally increase connectivity in the region, and provide more network diversity which will create more redundancy. There’s no mention of timelines in the release, but of course massive infrastructure projects like this won’t be completed overnight.