"The IRIS subsea cable is a remarkable project which ensures we now have direct links from Ireland to Iceland and further diversifies the connectivity links across Ireland," said Eamon Ryan, Minister for the Environment, Transport, Climate and Communications, Ireland.
"This has extensive positive implications for Galway and the West, potentially opening up the entire region for new investment."
The high-capacity Farice subsea cable system in Galway will deliver direct high-capacity links to Iceland but also to Northern Europe via Denmark and will greatly increase capacity and connectivity in the Galway region.
"IRIS, a new submarine cable connecting Iceland and Ireland, is a major milestone in strengthening and securing Iceland‘s electronic communications with Ireland and other countries," said Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, Minister of Universities, Industry and Innovation, Iceland.
"Together with Iceland‘s green and renewable energy sources this new submarine cable makes Iceland a highly competitive option for data centres, cloud service providers and high performance computing."
Farice awarded SubCom the contract to install the IRIS cable and has now received provisional acceptance for the final phase of the system before handing the system over to Farice.
“IRIS will enable us to accommodate the capacity needs of customers and bring diversity and resilience to our existing network by providing an important additional route for traffic flowing between Iceland and Europe,” explained Thorvardur Sveinsson, CEO of Farice.
"After careful consideration of many factors, Galway was selected by Farice as the European cable landing location. The suitable seabed conditions and strong local infrastructure was a key decision factor for us when selectin Galway as the landing site of our IRIS system. This coupled with Galway’s reputation for business, education and hospitality will lead to a win-win situation."
The IRIS system will become ready for service in Q1 of 2023 and will be the third subsea fibre cable connecting Iceland with Europe. The system provides added redundancy between Iceland and Europe, with low latency connections of around 10.5ms, between Reykjavík and Dublin.
"Our congratulations to Farice as they officially take the reins of the IRIS cable system,” said Debbie Brask, vice president of project management, SubCom.
“IRIS presented SubCom with unique design, technology, and implementation challenges that were overcome in order to meet our customer’s needs."
In addition, IRIS will be integrated into Farice’s network in Iceland and Europe to enhance the network connectivity between Farice’s network of points of presence (PoPs) in Iceland and Europe.
