Vodafone Iceland has signed a contract for capacity on Emerald Networks’s new submarine cable system, “Emerald Express”, which is a new-build system connecting North America to Europe, with a branch to Iceland. The system is scheduled to be ready for service in Q3 2014, and Vodafone Iceland plans on using it for communications for at least the next 15 years. Vodafone is the first Icelandic company to sign a contract with Emerald Networks.
The cable landing station in Iceland is in the vicinity of Grindavik, and Emerald will provide backhaul to Reykjavik and on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
- Emerald Networks’ submarine cable system span 6,700 km along the “Great Circle” route connecting North America to Europe via Iceland. The company has previous calculated that this northerly route will have a latency of less than 62 milliseconds round trip from New York to London, making it one of the fastest networks across the Atlantic.
