1 OCTOBER 2008 -- The Icelandic submarine cable operator E-Farice, together with its supplier, Tyco Telecommunications (search for Tyco), a business unit of Tyco Electronics have announced the start of the Iceland segment of the DANICE submarine cable system. With the completion of the Denmark shore-end lay installation at Blaabjerg, Denmark, in late August, the system is quickly approaching its planned completion at the end of December 2008.
The subsea DANICE Cable System is 2,300 km in length and is designed to provide robust, high-bandwidth connectivity to the Icelandic market and at the same time provide the country with fully redundant connectivity. The owners of E-Farice are the three largest power utilities in Iceland, the Icelandic State, and the two largest telecom operators in the country. E-Farice owns 80% of the FARICE-1 cable system, commissioned in 2003, connecting Iceland and The Faroe Islands to the UK, while the remaining 20% are owned by Faroese parties.
"The DANICE system will provide us with a fully redundant connection to Europe, together with our current FARICE-1 cable system," said Gudmundur Gunnarsson, CEO of E-Farice. "Iceland is becoming a popular location for data centres, thanks to our low-priced energy and other factors, and DANICE is the link needed to have data centre operators starting their services to corporations worldwide. More importantly, we are keeping to our plan to have the system up and running by the end of December of 2008, a significant achievement for any major infrastructure project. We are confident this Tyco Telecommunications-built, state-of-the-art system will provide Iceland with the reliable, flexible communications capabilities its users demand.
"The completed system will not only bring affordable communication to residents, but will also boost our data centre service capabilities. By significantly increasing bandwidth and the reliability of connections, users will have speed and access at their fingertips like never before. It is a real win for our existing and future customers," Gunnarsson added.
The DANICE system will comprise a four-fibre-pair submarine cable between Iceland and Denmark, with a design capacity of 5.1 Tbits/sec. The initial capacity will be 100 Gbits/sec. The system's use of DWDM technology will support the transmission of 128 ten-gigabit wavelengths on each fibre pair.
"Each portion of this system is comprised of the newest, most advanced generation of highly efficient subsea equipment," explains Rob Munier, managing director for global solutions at Tyco Telecommunications. "The completed system will provide the region with an essential advancement in communications technology."
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