The project, dubbed Polar Connect, would establish an undersea cable featuring 12 to 24 fibre pairs to support ultra-high transmission rates — providing an alternative route for transmissions from geopolitically challenging areas like the Red Sea.
Polar Connect has already raised some €4 million (US$4.1 million) from the European Commission via member state research agencies like the Swedish Research Council, with the initial Step 1 of the project set to commence, conducting surveys to determine optimal routes.
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Pär Jansson, SVP at GlobalConnect Carrier, said: “By enabling a faster, more secure digital link between Europe, Asia, and the US, we are catering to the accelerated global demand for high data capacity and resilient digital infrastructure that empowers our society.”
Today, 90% of all data communication between Europe & Asia passes through the Red Sea, a route increasingly impacted by geopolitical challenges. The ambition of the Polar Connect project is to offer a significantly safer and shorter route via the Arctic, which will decrease the time to send data, cut latency and improve resilience.
Around 90% of all data communications between Europe and Asia pass through the Red Sea, where Yemen-based Houthis have been targeting ships with missiles. Several subsea cables were damaged in the Red Sea in 2024, with experts suggesting that anchors from ships hit by the rebels were responsible for the damage, likely dragging across the seabed.
The Polar Connect cable project aims to provide more resilient connectivity through the Arctic via a much shorter route from Europe to Asia.
Alongside Global Connect, the project includes the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat (Polarforskningssekretariatet); the Technical University of Denmark (DTU); Sunet, the Swedish University Computer Network; and NORDUnet.
The cable is expected to be ready by 2030, with the quintet behind it in talks with the Swedish government to build a new breaker vessel to help lay the cable. The vessel would be capable of breaking through four-metre-thick ice to deploy the cable at depths of around 4000 metres.
The project comes after GlobalConnect finalised its 2,600km Nordic super fibre cable last March. The cable runs from Northern Sweden to Berlin and serves as a key infrastructure route between the Nordics and mainland Europe.
“We are excited to announce our participation in this groundbreaking Nordic consortium,” said Jansson. “At GlobalConnect, we work tirelessly to future-proof the digital infrastructure in Northern Europe and beyond and this project represents a giant leap in that plan.”
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