- Bulk Infrastructure proposes a 6,500-kilometer Norway-to-Montreal cable bypassing U.S. territory entirely.
- Costs exceed $620 million, with financing, customers, and route surveys still unresolved.
- Routing around U.S. territory does not guarantee independence from American networks downstream.
Norwegian infrastructure company Bulk Infrastructure is proposing a direct fiber cable from Norway to Canada, routed around the United States entirely. The project, named Leif Erikson, remains a proposal, not a construction announcement.
Canada currently has relatively few direct international cable options that avoid U.S. routing, a structural gap the project is designed to address. That context, combined with growing government interest in infrastructure resilience, gives the proposal its strategic weight.
…
YES! I want it. A way to get Canada closer to Europe… in preparation for them to join Schengen and the EEA
The syrup must flow.
Sorry, this is a data pipeline. Unless…
The new “oil”, filling sweet loving Euros with energy.
I can only see upsides with also adding some syrup pipelines next to the fiber cable.
Crude oil is just awful on pancakes for example, why do people even want to import all that yuck? SMHThe data cable will be inside the syrup cable. Then when the syrup stops flowing we know the data cable has been compromised.
Sort of like the condom/talabasco/condom model of contraception.
Canada does have the other kind too. Although a better use would be to take solar power through Europe from Northern Africa.
Just need superconducting power cables.
The great trans-Atlantic maple pipeline!
You wouldn’t download a plate of maple syrup
Slurp slurp The syrup our pancakes deserve.
I would totally use my Irish passport to get into Canada if they joined Shengen.
How much maple syrup can flow through the pipe?
Asking the real questions.
What’s the L/h on this removed?
Faster connection between Frankfurt and Canadian stock exchanges, encrypted personal data being on EU and Canadian servers, lower ping for gamers, better teleconferencing for the 2 tier EU meetings, etc.
Seems like a win to me
Love the idea, but the US would just blow it up if it hurt their interests
That’s why they in secret will build a second cable from Canada’s west coast and down around South America 🤫
Do it.
Counterpoint: place a few hundred thousand wireless repeaters on buoys.
Serious answer: software encryption is a gazillion times cheaper than this. If however freedom from reliance on American infra is the goal, then I stand corrected.
I believe the goal is to get away from USA infrastructure. Canada is already looking at building additional internal infrastructure so that domestic traffic never goes south of the border.
All the software encryption in the world is useless if a deranged USA leader gives the order to stop traffic originating/going to Canada.
All the software encryption in the world is useless if a deranged USA leader gives the order to stop traffic originating/going to Canada. Tru.
Don’t need to know what’s in the traffic to block it. US govt has demonstrated willingness to cut off technology at critical points to try and get what it wants. So yeah I’m thinking it’s about infrastructure.
That’s like… Iran/China totalitarianism shit. 🤢🤮
Imagine the latency of a few hundred thousand repeaters
I’d rather not 🤣
This seems like a good idea even from within the US, AND even if we imagine that this country was not giving the rest of the world reasons to keep their distance.
It seems to me it would make for a higher capacity, more resilient internet.
cool but canada is part of the five eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
so this would literally accomplish nothing except making a norwegian company rich(Un)Fun fact, a major function of the 5 eyes is to do end runs around our prohibitions on our intelligence agencies spying on our own citizens. We say our partners found the information and they shared it back with us.
“nothing” is an overstatement. It’s less US things to be compliant to. ICANN and IANA are still bitches here, though.
Redundancy is good.
The undersea cables are all very vulnerable to hostile nation states. You all need satellites as well, although they are deploying satellite killers in orbit as we speak, the russians and the us, not sure what china is doing.
Basically any country with an air force and a ballistic missile program has satellite killers.
China has demonstrated the ability to shoot down satellites using a fighter loaded with medium range missiles.
China has also targeted our satellites with lasers, in a not so subtle hint that they could hit them with missiles the article said, 15 some years back.
We are going to be trapped on earth if we start satellite wars, as the space junk will make launching very dicey. Even a piece of satellite the size of a grain of rice can destroy a satellite because of the speeds involved, as I understand it.
Tbh I expect us to kessler ourselves in my lifetime.
Might actually be the thing that makes everyone care about climate change
Let’s do it!
I think they should do it. Having an option that isn’t dependent on America’s ill will, is important if civilized nations are to have agency.
They also should make their own Starlink-ish constellation.
Europe and friends had benefited from a relative golden age of peace, using the peace dividend to invest in their civilian sectors. While it would be painful to invest in defense, the time has come to do so. It sucks, but the Dogey Confederates will abuse decent people if given an opening.
Europe does have their own Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb.
I am not sure how they compare, but it’s big enough to have global coverage according to Wikipedia.
Watch how quickly an ‘identified terrorist group’ sabotages that cable.
The “identified terrorist group” will be Russians pretending to be Ukrainians…
Or the US pretending to be someone, don’t think they won’t, it’s going downhill fast here.
suddenly the cables get cut.
Cool more intercontinental connections are needed. Today there are surprisingly few connections between Europe and North America which is sensitive if Russia decide to sabotage it.
There is also another major fiber project from Norway. That will go across the artic towards Japan and China, I think it would also connect to north America but I’m not sure if that was Alaska or Canada.
I’m love the idea and all but can someone eli5 why Norway - Montreal and not to somewhere in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia? Wouldn’t that be just as good and quite a bit shorter/cheaper?
Where did you get Montreal from? The article says it’s going to Newfoundland.
Edit: I had also not read the article far enough, it’s going from Newfoundland to Montreal with a regular cable over land.
Ah ok. Makes sense, thx.
