Build in partnership with subsea cable vendor Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the system connects the UK to the Nordics, with landings in Ireland, the Isle of Man, Blackpool and Newcastle in England, and Denmark.
A fully funded project, the system brings added diversity along its route, by avoiding existing congested paths across the English Channel. It also offers resilient network architecture options for customers whilst delivering the 'lowest latency available' between Dublin and the Nordics.
Boasting a number of technological firsts in its design and construction, Havhingsten is the world’s first aluminum conductor powered subsea cable system.
Aluminum enables lower cable conductor voltage drop, which in turn allows for a higher number of fibre-pairs per cable. Removing traditional copper raw material and replacing it with aluminum during manufacturing process benefits the overall system in terms of efficiency and cost, as copper is associated with variable availability and higher price.
In addition, lighter aluminum allows more cable to be loaded onto an installation vessel as well as improved resistance to hydrogen penetration, an element which is unfavorable to the operation of optical fibre in ocean waters.
The Havhingsten end-to-end system also benefits from a combination of data transmission types, with an unrepeatered subsea segment in the Irish Sea, a terrestrial segment in the UK and a repeatered segment in the North Sea.
The system also used a new enhanced, jet-assisted burial plough in both the North and Irish Sea segments, allowing the installers of the system to bury the cable to our specific demanding level of protection in very challenging seabed conditions along the route.
