A fibre consortium consisting of Green Mountain, Lyse, Haugaland Kraft and BKK, the Hatteland Group and Ryfylke IKS announced that they will build a new subsea fiber cable connecting Norway to the UK. The cable landing station will be located in Green Mountain’s data center outside Stavanger on the west-coast of Norway. This 700 km long NO-UK cable will be completed in 2021 and strengthen Green Mountain and Norway as an attractive data centre location.
Part of Euroconnect
The cable will be a part of Euroconnect-1, a larger fiber network operated by the wholly owned subsidiary of Lyse, Altibox. Euroconnect will connect Norway to important digital hubs such as London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Lyse states that with a capacity of up to 160 terabits per second, the subsea fibre cable will significantly increase data capacity between Norway and the rest of the world.
Making Norway more attractive
Historically, Norway’s biggest obstacle as a data centre nation has been connectivity. This project, along with other projects like the Havfrue cable in the southern part of Norway, makes us overcome this barrier. “We have always had a strong value proposition with our renewable and abundant hydropower, low power prices, safe business environment and beneficial framework conditions. Now we can truly add multiple state-of-the art international fiber connections to the list, which makes our offer even stronger.” says CEO of Green Mountain, Tor Kristian Gyland.
Knut Molaug, board member of the company NO-UK, is very excited “I am very pleased that the final agreement is now in place and that this important project becomes a reality. This high-speed direct connection is a door-opener for international establishments.”
«I am very happy that Green Mountain and the top notch utilities companies now take the lead in realizing this important project.» say chairman of the board of NO-UK, Geir Ims.
Norway is the gateway between Scandinavia and the UK/US market for datacenter to datacenter communication. From the landing stations in Stavanger and Newcastle the UK-NO subsea fibre cable will be connected to global datacenters.