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99% of international internet data traffic travels through fiber optic cables that run along the bottom of seas and oceans. There is a kind of Google Maps of submarine cables where you can see their trajectory to discover that, while there are areas that are true wastelands, in others there are tangles of cables that are bunched together. Precisely these areas are critical for potential accidents and attacks. Well, 90% of the capacity of the Europe-Asia cables passes through a region that is anything but calm: the Red Sea.

In times of peace these cables work well, but in conflicts they are a real candy for sabotage: they are "abandoned" to their fate in the middle of nowhere, they are strategic and repairing them is not exactly easy or convenient. And in fact, in the case of these Europe - Asia cables it has already happened: in 2024 a Houthi missile hit a cargo ship in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and its drifting anchor cut three underwater cables. Repair ships were able to enter four months later. In September 2025, history repeated itself. The Achilles heel is clear and Europe wants to solve it by detouring around the North Pole.

The alternative route: Polar Connect. The European Union, through its resilience panel, has recommended building two Arctic cables to reach Asia by avoiding the Red Sea: one would go through the Canadian Northwest Passage and the other would connect Scandinavia with Asia by directly crossing the North Pole. The latter is precisely the Polar Connect.

Said and done: the EU has already labeled this cable as a "Cable Project of European Interest" and has already prepared the first funds for its construction. The total estimated cost is around €2 billion and the operational target is 2030. Behind the project is the Nordic research and education network NORDUnet, Nordic network operators such as GlobalConnect Carrier and the Swedish polar research agency. This summer they are expected to do a study of the route.

Why it is important. Because submarine cables are the roads that keep the world in which we live connected: corporate communications, cloud services, finance, streaming, security... and the fact that the majority of connections between Europe and Asia occur through a corridor in persistent conflict increases the risk of blackouts between both continents. This cable seeks to minimize geopolitical risk while reducing latency in data transmission.

On the other hand, there is its strategic dimension: Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon already represent more than 70% of all submarine cable capacity consumed globally, compared to less from 10% a decade ago, according to data from TeleGeography and GlobalData. Europe does not have any route of its own to Asia. As Polar Connect states in its white paper, the three current options between Europe and Asia are the Red Sea, Russia or passing through the United States and none are under European sovereignty.

Context. The Red Sea and its surroundings have been an almost continuous hornet's nest since at least the 1950s: the Suez crisis, the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur... so as Roderick Beck, a veteran of the cable industry who is dedicated to the search for telecommunications capacity for internet service providers, explains to The Verge: the industry looked for alternatives in the Persian Gulf, but it is not exactly an oil raft either: The United States attacks on Iran in 2025 They also closed that road.

That said, the geopolitical context in the Arctic is not neutral either. Historically, running a cable through the Arctic required a partnership with Russia, but since the war with Ukraine, the North Pole corridor lacks Western intercontinental connectivity. However, it won't be easy: others have tried it before and failed, like Quintillion on the north coast of Alaska. They activated a section of cable, but the ice broke it twice and to repair it it is necessary either to have an icebreaking ship to repair the cable or to wait until summer.

How they want to do it. The plan is to connect the Nordic region with Japan and South Korea via fiber optics under the Arctic Ocean with possible branches to North America. In terms of financing, at the end of 2024, €44.6 million from the Connecting Europe Facility program were approved for the first phases.

Polar Connect will also have advanced sensors for environmental and climate monitoring, so that it would function as a telecommunications infrastructure and an Arctic scientific research instrument. The project is complemented by Far North Fiber, another Arctic cable that would take the Canadian Northwest Passage route. Together they would form a network with mutual redundancy: when one fails, the other takes over the traffic. As NORDUnet CEO Valter Nordh himself says: "both routes have strengths and weaknesses, which is why they complement each other well."

Yes, but. Designing, building and installing an underwater cable is not a small project, but the main problem that Polar Connect is going to face has already been glimpsed in the failed Quintillion project: the obstacle is maintenance. The ice cuts and icebergs drag the seabed to depths greater than the cable can be buried in a phenomenon known as ice scour.

If there is a break in winter, we have to wait until summer to repair it simply because there are no ships capable of breaking ice and laying cables at the same time. Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, one of the leading research companies in the sector, puts it bluntly: "We have seen many (arctic cable) projects happen. There is a reason for that, right? It's very complicated."

In Xataka | The submarine cables belonged to the teleoperators, and now the big technology companies are controlling them

Cover | PxHere and Gemini