Nine installments mapped the physical internet as cables, cuts, buildings, megawatts, caches, sky, deeds, ships, and sensors. This one looks at the route nobody has built yet: the cable across the top of the world. War in the Middle East is pushing Europe to attempt it again — and the graveyard of failed Arctic cables is full of the reasons why it keeps failing.
Europe's data has a chokepoint problem, and it sits in the most politically tense waterway on Earth.[6] The official Polar Connect site says more than 90% of Europe-Asia data traffic currently flows through the Suez Canal region.[6] In February 2024, three undersea cables were damaged in the Red Sea after the Rubymar cargo ship was struck by a Houthi missile and later drifted, with experts pointing to its trailing anchor as the likely cause.[6] Last September, another four cables were severed, likely by a commercial vessel dragging its anchor, again disrupting internet traffic in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.[5]
The Red Sea cuts spurred companies and governments to look for alternate routes, and the Strait of Hormuz seemed promising. Then the US and Israel attacked Iran, cable projects were halted, and now the world is looking elsewhere once again.[5] A European Union panel on cable resilience recommended building two Arctic cables in order to find a route to Asia without traveling through the Red Sea.[5] The white paper behind the effort notes that Europe's data currently has three routes to Asia, none of them ideal: through the Red Sea, through Russia, or through the US, a "long route controlled by non-European entities."[5]
The most ambitious proposal is called Polar Connect, named after a route that would cross the North Pole itself. It is being led by NORDUnet, the Nordic regional research and education network, with Sweden's polar research agency and the telecom firm GlobalConnect Carrier.[5][7] GlobalConnect joined the consortium in January 2025.[7] A Northern EU Gateways report from the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat estimated the full cost at approximately 2 billion euros, and the EU designated Polar Connect a "Cable Project of European Interest" and put approximately 9 million euros toward preparatory work.[5] The estimated cost is about $2.3 billion.[6]
The project's plan: a 10,000 km cable, traveling under 2000 km of thick Arctic ice, from Europe to Japan and the US.[7] The goal is to establish a subsea fiber route from Sweden via Norway and Svalbard through the North Pole to Japan, South Korea, and the Asia-Pacific region via the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.[8] The cable is expected to be placed at roughly 13,100 feet below the Arctic Ocean, based on a planned depth of about 4,000 meters.[6] NORDUnet says the route would run just west of the Geographic North Pole, and that a route closer to the pole is shorter and less challenging due to lighter ice conditions than a route through the EEZ north of Greenland.[8]
There is history money behind it. NORDUnet, the Swedish Research Council, and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat received European Commission funding for the North Pole Fibre project, which started in Q1 2024 with a total budget of €5.75 million.[8] In December 2024 the EU gave Polar Connect €4 million for phase one: detailed mapping of the Arctic seabed, which has never been undertaken before.[7] Polar Connect's Vision 2030 effort is studying two main options — a direct route under sea ice near the North Pole, and a route through the Northwest Passage between Greenland and Canada — and the project plans SMART repeaters so the cable can double as a scientific instrument on the Arctic seafloor.[6][8] Step 2 runs from 2026 to 2028, with the goal of the first submarine cable system between Europe, Asia, and North America through the Arctic Ocean.[6] It is hoped the project will be online by 2030.[7]
The engineering reads like a polar expedition manifest. The laying phase would need three ships: two heavy icebreakers at Polar Class 2 and an ice-strengthened cable-laying ship, with the icebreakers managing the ice ahead of the layer.[8] There is no cable-laying ship today suitable for autonomous use in heavy sea ice, so the report suggests retrofitting an existing cable ship or reconfiguring a larger ice-class vessel — the Finnish icebreakers Fennica and Nordica have been identified as candidates.[8] The Swedish government owns one suitable icebreaker, the Oden, and is planning a second; a recent report suggested the cable could be laid in less than 80 days over late summer and early autumn, when conditions are most favorable, at a laying cost of roughly 1.5–2.5 billion SEK ($142.5–237.5 million).[8]
This is not the first attempt, and the industry remembers every one. People have discussed an Arctic cable for at least 20 years, said Alan Mauldin, a research director at TeleGeography.[5] In 2018-2021, Finnish state-owned Cinia tried to build an Arctic route with a Russian partner: the Arctic Connect plans fell through in May 2021, and were reconfigured as a Western project, Far North Fiber.[1] Far North Fiber, proposed in December 2021 by Cinia and Far North Digital of Anchorage, is a 14,000 km cable from Japan to Europe via the Northwest Passage; it is now a joint venture with Japan's Arteria Networks and NORDUnet as an investor, with 12 fiber pairs and a scheduled launch in 2027.[1][8] But Arctic Today's analysis from January 2026 is blunt: while Far North Fiber and Polar Connect are still on the agenda, the time it will take to secure partnerships, gather findings, and build a commercial case in an unstable geopolitical climate means they are far from being realised.[9]
The closest thing to a built Arctic cable ended in ice. Quintillion acquired the assets of Arctic Fibre in 2016 and activated a portion running from Nome along the northern coast of Alaska to Prudhoe Bay, but in June 2023, sea ice broke it.[5] Because there are no icebreaker cable ships, Quintillion had to wait for the summer ice to melt before repairing; then in January of last year an iceberg struck again, in deep winter, and no one could repair the cable for eight months.[5] The rest of the route was never laid.[5]
The failure mode is physical. Ice scour — ice scraping against the cable — is the hazard, and icebergs can drag along the ocean floor digging long grooves deeper than a cable can be buried.[5] If the cable is damaged, you cannot repair it until summer, and the repair window is ruled by the ice, not the calendar.[5][8] Even the maintenance map is missing: the full path of Arctic submarine cables is currently not covered by any of the submarine cable maintenance zones, and the Atlantic Cable Maintenance Agreement goes north of Svalbard but not across the North Pole.[8] No Arctic cable has ever crossed the pole; every trans-Arctic line that was proposed has either failed or is still a map.
The cables that do work at the top of the world are regional, not trans-Arctic. Greenland Connect has connected Canada, Greenland, and Iceland since March 2009, and it instantly reduced internet latency by approximately 500 ms in Nuuk; a west-coast extension, Greenland Connect North, reached Aasiaat in October 2017.[3] FARICE-1 has connected Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scotland since January 2004.[4] And Russia is building its own Arctic spine: the Polar Express is a proposed 12,650 km cable connecting Murmansk and Vladivostok along the Northern Sea Route, with planned total capacity from 52 to 104 Tbit/s; the project was ordered by presidential decree in October 2020, the first section was installed at Amderma in October 2022, and a coastal station was built at Dikson in 2023.[2] Scholars count both in the same breath — "several projects are underway in the Arctic including 12,650 km Polar Express and 14,500 km Far North Fiber" — and warn the region lacks a nuanced regulatory framework, with environmental concerns about ice hazards, seabed disturbance, and electromagnetic and thermal effects on sensitive organisms.[12]
Arctic Today's analysis argues that as the trans-Arctic dreams stall, pressing security, militarization, and sovereignty concerns are driving state-funded regional cables — a shift toward digital sovereignty where state control over Arctic fiber is prioritized over commercial profit.[9] Norway is advancing a government-funded replacement for the ageing Svalbard cable system, linking mainland Bodø, Jan Mayen, and Longyearbyen before the current infrastructure's technical lifespan ends in 2028.[9] The Norwegian Parliament approved the project on March 25, with SubCom contracted for production and laying, and the Norwegian Armed Forces designated as a primary customer; planned to go live in 2028, the system will span 1,567 miles (2,522 km) and become the world's northernmost repeated subsea cable system.[9] Greenland's state-owned operator Tusass has effectively blocked low-earth orbit competitors such as Starlink, and Denmark is covering the highest cost through its defense budget, paying for a secure cable link to Europe.[9]
The same logic is driving the first terrestrial fiber connection to Nunavut, Canada's Arctic territory. In April 2025 the premiers of Manitoba and Nunavut committed to work together to advance the nation-building Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link (KHFL), following Manitoba's announcement to set aside 50 megawatts of power towards its development.[10] The KHFL will be the first infrastructure connection between Nunavut and the rest of Canada, and will feature advanced fibre-optic capabilities.[10] Nunavut remains the only region of Canada without an overland connection to the rest of the country; the Kivalliq region currently consumes approximately 138 million litres of diesel annually for electricity generation while relying primarily on satellite communications.[11] In July 2026 the two governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding reaffirming Manitoba's commitment to provide 50 megawatts of firm electric capacity.[11] The project is Inuit-owned through Nukik Corporation, and its backers frame it in the language of Arctic sovereignty: "When you look across the nation at the projects that can assert Arctic sovereignty, reinforce national security and be a catalyst for unprecedented socio-economic development, the KHFL really is one of a kind."[10]
The map keeps redrawing itself for the same reason: the internet's southern shortcuts run through the world's most contested water.[5] The Arctic route is longer in political risk but shorter in geography, and that trade is now being priced by governments, not carriers.[5][9]
The honest lesson of the graveyard is maintenance, not money.[5][8] Quintillion failed because ice owns the repair calendar; Polar Connect's chances rest on whether it can put a repair ship under an icebreaker before it lays a single meter of cable.[5][8] The EU is funding the Arctic shortcut precisely because it treats the cable as a sovereignty project — the same reason Norway's Arctic Way is being built with the Armed Forces as its primary customer.[5][9]
And the sources themselves disagree about the line: SDxCentral's account has Polar Connect following the Northern Sea Route, NORDUnet's map puts it just west of the Geographic North Pole, and Vision 2030 studies both a pole route and a Northwest Passage route.[7][8][6] That disagreement is the truth of the project's stage — a route still finding its line, on a map most of the industry has been drawing for twenty years.[5] The polar shortcut is the physical internet's last blank space: the one cable that, if it ever gets built, will be the first of its kind.[6][12]
[1] Far North Fiber — Wikipedia
[2] Polar Express (cable system) — Wikipedia
[3] Greenland Connect — Wikipedia
[4] FARICE-1 — Wikipedia
[5] The Verge, 12 May 2026 — internet choke point, North Pole solution
[6] Vozpopuli Indux, 11 Jun 2026 — Arctic subsea cable at 13,100 ft under the ice
[7] SDxCentral, 21 Jan 2025 — GlobalConnect joins Polar Connect
[8] SDxCentral, 31 May 2024 — Arctic subsea cable through the North Pole proposed
[9] Arctic Today, 28 Jan 2026 — why are Arctic undersea cables going regional?
[10] GlobeNewswire via Yahoo Finance, 17 Apr 2025 — Manitoba and Nunavut partner on Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link
[11] GlobeNewswire via Markets Insider, 8 Jul 2026 — Nukik welcomes Nunavut-Manitoba MOU
[12] Submarine communications cable — Wikipedia
all cited sources fetched and verified 2026-08-28; verbatim evidence quotes kept in the citation ledger.