A new subsea Internet cable could connect Antarctica with Chile.
Chile’s Undersecretariat of Telecommunications is working with the regional government in Magallanes, the country’s southernmost province, and CAF, the development bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, to launch a feasibility study into setting up the cable route.
Subsea cable experts Pioneer Consulting and telecoms consultants Salience Consulting will carry out the feasibility study, which has a budget of $2.2 million.
According to the tender document, the cable will connect “Chile and the bases in Antarctica, to strengthen connectivity and scientific collaboration between multiple countries, promoting regional integration, research and the advancement of scientific knowledge.”
It could enable scientists to access and transmit data more quickly, and give those working at the South Pole the ability to use cloud-based tools.
Claudio Araya, Chile’s undersecretary of telecommunications, said: “This study will allow us to know if the conditions exist to carry out this project.
“Telecommunications and digitalization are the driving force of development in our country and in the entire region and in this sense, Chile is building a solid technological platform that will allow, among other things, to connect the Antarctic territory with the rest of the world.”
In a statement posted on LinkedIn, Pioneer Consulting said the study will look at “many aspects of this potential project ranging from desktop study and market assessment to political and legal frameworks.” The study will take up to 16 months.
The Antarctic is currently devoid of subsea cables, but the Chilean project is the second to be mooted for the region in recent months.
The US government’s National Science Foundation (NSF) is investigating the possibility of building a cable connecting the largest US Antarctic Program research facility, McMurdo Station, with either New Zealand or Australia.
Though the main scope of the installation “is to provide advanced high-speed, low delay telecommunications” to McMurdo Station, the cable “will contain additional point sensors and/or distributed sensing infrastructure, enabling for the first time myriad investigations across a broad range of scientific disciplines,” the NSF says.
Having already carried out feasibility studies to determine that building a cable to the Antarctic is possible, in December 2024 the NSF published a call for information that can help move the project forward. No timescales have been disclosed as to when it might come into service.
Antarctica is following in the footsteps of its northern hemisphere counterpart, the Arctic, where two cable routes are under development. These are the Alaska-based Far North Fiber project and Polar Connect, which proposes to lay a cable through the North Pole ice sheet. Both routes aim to connect the US, Europe, and Asia via the Northern Sea Route.
Source: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/subsea-cable-could-connect-antarctica-and-chile/