7/3/2022 - SubCom’s cable installation vessel, the CS Durable, landed the IRIS Subsea Telecoms Cable System (IRIS) at Thorlakshofn beach in Iceland on May 23.

Per a report at SubCom’s website, the landing signifies the commencement of the marine installation of the IRIS cable system that Farice has been developing since 2019. During the summer months, SubCom’s CS Durable will lay the cable south from Iceland to Galway, Ireland, with final splice and completion of marine work planned for mid-August 2022.

Marine survey of the entire route was done by Farice in 2020 and 2021. SubCom completed the final design, preparation work, and manufacturing of the system during 2021-2022. The cable installation progressed at some 20-200 km per day with burial or surface lay from Iceland to Ireland. The target burial depth of the cable was 1.5 m beneath the seabed in water depth of up to 1,500 m.

Designed as a six-fiber pair trunk with a total system capacity of 108 Tbps (each fiber pair delivers 18Tbs), IRIS will be approximately 1,700 km in length and connect southwest of Iceland to Ballyloughane Strand in Galway, Ireland. The cable was made at SubCom’s plant in Newington, New Hampshire.

The IRIS system will be ready for service in the beginning of 2023. It will be the third submarine fiber optic cable system connecting Iceland with Europe, providing further redundancy in telecom connection, with low latency connections around 10.5 ms, between Reykjavík and Dublin.

Farice, a connectivity provider owned by the Icelandic Government, owns and operates two submarine cable systems that connect Iceland to Europe: FARICE-1 and DANICE. The newest cable system will improve the diversity of adequate connections to support the continued growth of Iceland’s modern community and international business environment.