Telecoms company Farice, which owns and operates several key submarine cables, has begun preparations for a new subsea cable that will be laid between southern Iceland and Scotland.
A service delivery point is planned in either Glasgow or Edinburgh, the group said in a statement on Friday (24 April). This will allow it to connect to diverse routes in other major European telecom hubs, including London, Dublin, Amsterdam and the other Nordic countries.
The new cable will be named AUÐUR, referencing the settler Auður the Deep-Minded, who sailed from Scotland to Iceland, as described in the Icelandic Sagas.
A marine survey for the cable route is scheduled for summer 2027. If plans proceed as expected, the cable is anticipated to be operational by 2030.
Farice said that the cable is expected to be built with high capacity to meet the rapidly growing demand for international connectivity between Iceland and Europe, particularly driven by data centre
development. It is projected to include 16–24 fibre pairs.
“The time has come to further strengthen Iceland’s telecommunications infrastructure by building a new high-capacity cable. Through the new cable, we will create a new low-latency route between Iceland and Europe‘s key network hubs as well and further strengthen the digital bridge within the Nordics,” said Thorvardur Sveinsson, CEO of Farice.
“Icelandic data centres can be seamlessly integrated into network topologies, bridging the US and Nordic markets. The Nordic region is rapidly emerging as a major data centre hub, making interconnectivity with the Nordics ever more important,” he said.
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