Norwegian Company Pitches 2,800-Mile Undersea Cable Linking Canada and Europe to Bypass the US
- 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.
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https://www.gadgetreview.com/norwegian-company-pitches-2800-mile-undersea-cable-linking-canada-and-europe-to-bypass-the-usOpen linkView original on scribe.disroot.org
84 replies
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? SMH
The 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?
There's not much left.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-maple-syrup-reserves-nearly-depleted-9.7386889
Can't you just chew on the leaves to curb withdrawal symptoms?
Asking the real questions.
What's the L/h on this removed?
Also important that it bypasses Britain (from were there are cables directly to Canada) since the Brits do digital surveillance on everything that goes through cables that land in Britain and give that data to the Americans, as shown in the Snowden Revelations.
Sorry to break it to you... but ECHELON is a surveillance program operated by the signatories of the UKUSA Security Agreement... aka the Five Eyes... Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States. Canada is in that list spying for the group right alongside everyone else. Two of the intercept stations are located in Canada... CFS Leitrim (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) and CFB Gander (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada).
True.
It's just that if that data doesn't go via a different 5-eyes member nation then Canada can actually chose whether they want data going between Canada and Europe to be under surveillance and a copy getting sent to the US or not, whilst if it does they have no such choice.
Yes that's important. I would also be happy to support more connectivity via Greenland and Iceland.
MACsec your WAN links.
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
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.
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.
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 🤣
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 🤫
Redundancy is good.
Do it.
As a Californian I highly recommend doing so
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.
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.
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
The point is to protect comms during times of peace, not war.
We've (excluding the US,) been at peace for some time, and cables are getting cut left and right. Not even all recently, even 15 years back there were some suspicious ones out by Asia, forget the details, but Fox was up in arms about it.
Edit: What should be done, is to mass produce some gear to hook onto the cables or near them, to spy out sabotage attempts and give early warnings. Then scramble the warplanes.
Or even an electrical line, with flashpoints where if a diver or submarine drone gets near, they can send electricity through the water to incapacitate the threat.
I’ll believe Europe is serious when they leave the 5 Eyes or kick out the US
The only European nation in the 5-eyes is Britain.
That said Canada too is part of the 5-eyes.
Maybe you're thinking of one of the outer "eyes" organizations such as the 14-eyes, of which several other European countries are members.
probably. It's still a compromised network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eyes,_and_other_%22third_parties%22
Let’s do it!
Yes please.
Excellent idea.
I dont understand the last point, are we saying the existence of the cable outside the US doesn't prevent US tech being used on it? Because that isnt a con, its a given and how the infrastructure should work. It would never be a private network, if it is for comms anyone can use it. Likely, the US could just buy pairs to use themselves but the location gives it opportunity.
The cable itself isn't what's at issue, it's whom owns the infrastructure on the end of it. ie if a European owned cable crosses the Atlantic and lands in America into a landing station owned by AT&T or Comcast it's reliant on US compliance in its traffic. America has proven itself to be a hostile power to European interests now and therefore cannot be relied upon.
Yeah but it isn't landing into the US. It would be proper order to take control of sucb infrastructure at a state level and not have private industry manage the nodes.
Yes, that's exactly the point, moving critical digital infrastructure out of the hands of US business and state control.
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.
Why is the image for the article from a completely different project on the other side of the world?
Because it fits. What image would be used otherwise? Just the bottom of the sea?
They would probably preefer to sea the Norwegian or Canadian flag.
Hehe, sea
also "reef" in preefer.
I dunno, maybe a fibre optic cable rather than an artists' impression of an underwater power line?
Build it first, take a picture later.
Probably because they couldn't find the perfect picture under a good enough license. Or because journo wasn't technical.
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.
I take it you didn't read the article?
Briefly flew over it, was in a hurry.
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.
Changes are never made overnight for something like this
idk which change you'd think they make for something like this? exit five eyes or making europe part of "six-eyes"? would you trust them with an exemption for european data?
Shifting from a domain of influence to another domain of influence
so you'd be ok if they do the whole data-sharing-circle-jerk if they did it with the EU?
When did I say that?
you were talking about "shifting domains of influence" i asked if that's what you meant
Just don't make it out of copper because those american salvage companies are feeling the squeeze right now, just like everybody else.
To think that Canada is a needed connection is odd. It doesn't have the population base or breadth of industry to justify this.
Does it go all the way under the ocean or does it go through Faeroer Islands, Iceland, Greenland? Or maybe through Svalbard and Greenland
They should use the new 24% faster "hollow-core fiber" that China developed.