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Northern EU Gateways supports the creation of Arctic routes for internet traffic between Europe and Asia & North America. Such routes will offer a strong alternative to Atlantic routes to North America and to both terrestrial routes and subsea routes through the Indian ocean to Asia.
Work package 5, led by NORDUnet, explores the feasibility of the most direct routes east of Greenland, while other work pakages led by Cinia will do detailed planning for a route west of Greenland.
Design physically secure and cyber secure digital backbone connections for Europe in order to minimize the risks for the deployment, use, and maintenance of the future connections by European initiatives, companies and technology
Design more connectivity for the purposes of R&E sectors in order to satisfy rapidly increasing demand for efficient data infrastructures
Study the feasibility of next generation sensing on submarine cables in order to offer remarkable new tools in the study of climate change, seafloor seismicity, and oceanography
Research is global, and as a result, intercontinental capacity is a critical resource for NRENs. Such capacity exists today on a number trans-Atlantic cable systems, as well on limited number of routes to Asia. For Asia, route options are limited. It is essential for European research and education to secure long-term solutions for direct, high-capacity, diverse routes to other continents, in particular North America and Asia.
The Northern EU Gateways project gives a boost to the Polar Connect initiative led by NORDUnet by investigating the shorter route options for subsea cables through the Arctic Ocean. Polar Connect seeks to catalyse the establishment of resilient connectivity through the Arctic to Asia (Japan) and North America for the Research, Development, Innovation (RDI), and Education sectors. These submarine cable systems will bring not only resilience to the network, but will also mitigate digital congestion, improve sustainability, and induce economic benefits to the Nordic region.
Besides greatly enhanced digital resilience, a further advantage is improved sustainability. The Nordic countries hold ample renewable energy resources, like hydro power, wind power, geothermal power and tidal/wave power. The demand for renewable low-carbon energy is constantly growing in Europe. To host data centres in the North is efficient as it is more efficient to move bits than energy. And this greener data centre vision can only be achieved if these data centres are well-connected to both Europe and other world regions.
As part of the Northern EU Gateways project activities there will be a substantial amount of research and stakeholder engagement carried out. The effort will not only contribute to raising awareness about ways to strengthen the digital sovereignty of the Nordic research and education communities, but also building a network of human connections amongst various areas of expertise.