An undersea fiberoptic cable which provides vital internet connection and communications links between mainland Norway and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean has mysteriously been put out of action.
The outage on the subsea communications cable, which is the northern most cable of its kind in the world, occurred on January 7 but was only revealed to the public yesterday by Space Norway, who owns and maintains the technology.
The disruption, which occurred on one of two fiberoptic cables, could prove disastrous as it means there is now only one connection between the mainland and Svalbard with no backup.
The cables provide essential power for Space Norway to run the Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat), and also enable broadband internet connection on the islands.
Should the second cable fail before repairs are made, Svalbard’s citizens and SvalSat will be effectively cut off from Norway.
It comes as Britain’s newly appointed chief of the defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, warned that Russia may look to cripple such vital undersea communications wires supporting the UK.
In an interview at the weekend, Radakin said there had been ‘a phenomenal increase’ in Russian submarine activity over the past 20 years, adding: ‘Russia has grown the capability to put at threat those undersea cables and potentially exploit them.’
The press release from Space Norway said the power outage was first detected at 4:10 am local time on Friday morning, and that the cable has been out of order since.
The fault in the cable, which runs from Longyearbyen in Svalbard to Andoeya on Norway’s north coast, was detected between 80 – 140 miles from Longyearbyen at a point where the cable runs from less than 0.2 miles deep to over 1.3 miles deep under the surface between the Greenland, Norwegian and Barents seas.
Space Norway did not provide details of the outage, the extent of the damage or how it was caused, but confirmed that an cable-laying vessel will need to be dispatched to administer repairs.
Discussion about this post