Each day an estimated 95 percent of the world’s data travels across the roughly 900,000 miles of submarine fiber optic cables criss-crossing the ocean floor.
To keep up with the world’s insatiable data needs, construction could soon begin on a new cable located within a once-inaccessible environment.
Politico reports that a consortium of companies intends to move forward with the Far North Fiber project-a deep sea cable that would stretch over 9,000 miles through the Northwest Passage, connecting Europe to Japan, alongside additional landing sites in Alaska, Canada, Norway, Finland, and Ireland.
As our digital lives travel along these submarine cables, they devour gigantic amounts of energy and further exacerbate climate change.
The Arctic, for example, is currently warming almost four times faster than the rest of the planet, causing its sea ice to shrink by roughly 13 percent per decade.
According to one Far North Fiber developer all that terrifying environmental decimation creates a new business opportunity.
The Arctic’s previously unthinkable thaws will present a “Sweet spot where it’s now accessible and allows us a time window when we can get the cable safely installed,” Ik Icard, chief strategy officer at Far North Digital, told Politico.
Far North Fiber’s backers claim that, once constructed, their cable would also be better protected compared to similar lines elsewhere in the world.
The threat of sabotage is an increasing concern to the telecom companies overseeing deep sea cable systems.
More than 90 percent of all Europe-Asia data traffic travels along cables within the Red Sea trading corridor.
Thanks to a recent increase in the region’s geopolitical unrest and violence, cable lines face greater risk of damage.
That’s about four times the cost of laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean, and around three times as much to do so in the Pacific.
Despite the exponential price tag, the European Union has signaled its interest with a €23 million investment in Far North Fiber.
“Nobody wants to cut a cable under the ice, it’s really hard to do,” Far North Digital co-founder Ethan Berkowitz said.