Meta accomplishes construction of Havhingsten aluminium power subsea cable system, outperforming copper

Meta, the parent company of Facebook on Thursday, March 24, announced the completion of Havhingsten subsea cable system construction, the world’s first aluminium conductor driven cable system. For this Meta collaborated with Aqua Comms, Bulk Fiber Networks and Alcatel Submarine Networks ("ASN"). The subsea cable will improve communication across Europe and Nordics.

The Havhingsten cable system connects Dublin, Ireland, to Blackpool, England, on the United Kingdom's west coast, with a portion extending to the Isle of Man and Seaton Sluice, Northumberland, to Denmark. This new route gives businesses, carriers, and hyperscalers more options for network architecture while also providing the lowest latency between Dublin and the Nordic region.

The Havhingsten subsea cable system will also supply the region's internet with much-needed capacity and dependability.The use of aluminium conductors in place of copper lowers cost, improves efficiency, better resistance to hydrogen penetration, which is detrimental to optical fibre performance in ocean environments.

The end-to-end system also guarantees that data is smoothly transported over an unrepeatered subsea portion in the Irish Sea, a terrestrial segment in the United Kingdom, and a repeater segment in the North Sea. In the North and Irish Sea portions, the system featured an upgraded, jet-assisted burial plough, which allowed installers to bury the cable to particular depths in difficult seabed circumstances.

Subsea cables are part of Meta’s ongoing efforts to invest in basic infrastructure to meet current and future internet demand, as well as to prepare for the metaverse. According to Meta, bringing the metaverse to life will need significant improvements in the underlying connection infrastructure.