The Icelandic infrastructure for telecommunications networks and services is highly advanced, and unique for such a small nation. The system ranks among the most sophisticated anywhere, and is the world?s first fully digitalized telephone system, according to Iceland Telecom. Mobile phone penetration in Iceland is among the highest in the world, as well as Internet penetration. Over 90% of Iceland?s population has access to the Internet, either at home or work, if not both.
Submarine Fibre-optic Systems
Iceland is linked with Europe and North America via a number of fibre-optic submarine systems, one of which is the fastest trans-Atlantic service. The fibre-optic submarine systems are Farice, Danice, Greenland Connect and Cantat-3. The Emerald Express trans-Atlantic ultra-high bandwith cable will be in service from late 2012.
Farice Ltd., a company owned by the Icelandic State, private telecommunications companies in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, operates two fibre-optic submarine systems. The Farice cable, between Iceland and Scotland, is a highly advanced, 1,400 km long, state-of-the-art, submarine, fibre-optic system. This system is based on DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) submarine optical-transmission technology. It interconnects the Icelandic, Faroese and Scottish telecommunications networks, supporting the growth of Internet-based services and data networking in Iceland. The system has an ultimate transmission capacity of 720 Gb/sec, equivalent to more than 10 million simultaneous phone calls, and the standard equipped capacity is 20 Gb/sec, upgradeable in accordance with future traffic requirements.
The Danice undersea fiber optic system provides high bandwidth connectivity between Landeyjar, Iceland, and Blaabjerg, Denmark. The Danice submarine connunications cable system transits 2250 Km of the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea to connect Iceland and Denmark. It consists of four fibre pairs, capable of carrying in total up to 5.1 Tbit/s of data. The system will serve the data center market in Iceland by providing direct access to Western Europe via a state-of-the-art undersea fiber optic link.
Iceland is also connected to the Greenland Connect submarine cable system across the Atlantic Ocean. The cable provides commercial transmission services between Lond, UK, and Halifax, Nova Scotia via Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. The system consists of a westbound leg from Nuuk, Greenland, to Newfoundland and an eastbound leg to Iceland. Furthermore, a domestic link is established between Nuuk and Qaqortoq. In total, the system is 4598 Km and the system is the fastest service from Northern Europe to Northern America.
Emerald Express
Emerald Atlantis Limited and TE SubCom have announced the first phase of the Emerald Express Trans-Atlantic Cable System will be in service late 2012. The first phase will provide both low-latency and ultra-high bandwidth capacity between the US, Canada, UK and Iceland, requiring 5,200km of advanced submarine fibre optic cable (see map below).
Iceland is linked with Europe and North America via Cantat-3 fibre-optic submarine cable, connecting to Europe and North America, has a capacity of 5 Gb/sec in both directions, with an extra 2.5 Gb/sec to spare.
Other connections with the world as a whole are via satellite systems: Intelsat, Eutelsat, Iridium, Inmarsat and New Skies Satellites.
Map of the new Emerald Express trans-Atlantic ultra-high bandwith cable.