What are the biggest trends shaping the Icelandic communications and data centre market right now?

I see one of Farice’s roles being to act as an enabler for the data centre industry, with Iceland being active in this field for about 15 years now.

Having joined Farice in 2010, I’ve seen the growth in that sector since the beginning and also know the challenges well. In Iceland’s market, available and affordable renewable power has often been seen as a positive factor, and its remoteness as negative in terms of the deployment of infrastructure.

In the last 18 months or so, we’ve seen a real blossoming of the sector. Much of this has been driven by AI and its need for power and strong connectivity, as well as players seeking stable and reliable green power in a country with 100% of electricity from renewable sources.

How has Farice supported and responded to these market developments?

It’s been exciting for us to see the type of traffic that we’ve never seen before, and we’ve been busy connecting new AI-driven companies, aside from serving long-established customers. We have good capacity to serve them, with three submarine cables – FARICE-1, DANICE and IRIS – providing diverse routes connecting Iceland with the rest of Europe.

In line with the market’s evolution, we also established points of presence in Akureyri in northern Iceland this year. We have expanded northwards to improve resiliency for the country, as well as open up access to energy in the north of Iceland. Meanwhile, we help to support communities in nearby islands like Greenland and the Faroe Islands via our networks.

What has the company’s most recent subsea cable, IRIS, brought to the market? 

IRIS went live in March 2023, complementing the FARICE-1 cable launched in 2004 and DANICE in 2009. Running from Iceland to Dublin in Ireland, it adds extra resiliency and security.

It’s been a very successful project that we built in time and to budget. Apart from attracting the likes of enterprises and data centre, AI, cloud and content players seeking connectivity at an international level, it has also brought advantages domestically.

As a result of the project, for example, we built 250km of new fibre routes in the south-west of Iceland, elevating connectivity to a new level there and thus benefiting society. Also, as an indirect effect, spare dark fibres in the network are being used to detect volcanic activity and predict eruptions with more accuracy.

How else is Farice boosting security in the digital age?

Security is something we see as another of our central roles. Apart from the resiliency we’ve built up through the rollout of our three subsea cables and terrestrial fibre, we’ve now become a satellite service integrator since June.

We developed our platform with Marlink, the satellite, terrestrial and digital managed service provider and integrator. To do this, we looked at the whole nation and worked out how we could give critical enterprises and sectors a centralised platform that would kick in if other communications infrastructure like subsea cables experience a cut or fail.

We’ve done this because even though we’ve never yet had a subsea failure, we take security seriously for the future and in light of previous cuts seen to infrastructure around the world. The system could, meanwhile, be used as a blueprint by other islands and remote areas.

What are the prospects for the future of the industry in Iceland?

At Farice itself, we’ll continue to ensure we have an up-to-date network capable of meeting current traffic needs, with plans for a new cable within a few years to replace our oldest one.

One of the key needs in Iceland as a whole for the data centre market to thrive is continued growth in energy production to support future requirements, which would require simplification of the licensing process for new energy projects. The new government formed at the end of last year is really progressive in this regard.

Meanwhile, demand for bandwidth has never been so high and I hope capacity providers will see a future with decent returns on investment, after facing challenges in the past.