A Finnish company specializing in critical, high-reliability connections and software Cinia Oy issued 18.03 a piece of news that a consortium will implement a project of a Pan-Arctic Cable System (PACS). The ambition of PACS is to create new critical routes between Europe and Asia via the Arctic and North America.

The project is an old one starting in 1999 by a Russian company Polarnet Ltd. The idea of the Polarnet was to lay a telecommunications cable along the bottom of the Russian Arctic seas (Laptev, Barents, Kara, East Siberian and Bering). In 2002, the company spent $55 million on marine scientific expeditions and design and survey work. During 2016-2017 Polarnet Ltd. and Cinia Oy were negotiating about building a cable line from UK to Japan, but did not come to any agreement.

The next attempt Cinia made with the Russian telecommunications company Megafon and even signed an agreement in 2019 about a cable line from Helsinki to Japan. In 2021, Megafon left the project because the companies did not manage to agree on all conditions.

Now in 2025 a consortium of Cinia Oy, NORDUnet A/S, Tusass A/S, the Dutch Subsea Cable Coalition, GlobalConnect AB, and Tampnet AS have signed a European Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aiming to establish PACS. The Parties will develop the project with the ambition to have the PACS fully ready for Service by the early 2030s, while some parts of system are planned to be in service earlier. 

Pan-Arctic Cable System aims to fulfil the conditions for being labelled a Cable Project of European Interest (CPEI) as defined by the European Commission. The parties intend to pursue a long-term collaborative strategy and objectives for the benefit of critical submarine cable infrastructure.

Source: Cinia

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