A €12.5 million fibre optic gateway running below the Irish Sea has gone live, offering the shortest available data connection between Ireland and Britain.
The 131km-long CeltixConnect cable – which is owned and operated by Sea Fibre Networks – will provide a high-speed link between Dublin, Manchester and London.
“The interest so far has been huge; we’ve had direct contact from a lot of companies in the IFSC who are looking for low latency,” said Diane Hodnett, chief executive of Sea Fibre Networks.
Latency refers to delay or lag on the connection. In the case of fibre-optic cables it is a function of the speed of light, so the shorter the physical length of the cable, the lower the latency.
Ms Hodnett said the connection will be of particular interest to companies engaged in high frequency trading in the IFSC, as even a fractional time lag can cost significant amounts of money.
She said the next shortest connection between Ireland and Britain is about 230km long, a difference that would add about half a millisecond to the transmission time of data.
The CeltixConnect cable passes through the East Point Business Park in Dublin and on to the IFSC.
Once it reaches the other side of the Irish Sea, the CeltixConnect cable joins the Welsh government’s “Fibrespeed” network.
This gives it high-speed access to Manchester and London.
“Most cables follow the same route [as each other] and this has opened an opportunity for us as we offer complete diversity,” said Ms Hodnett. “There have been instances where two separate providers went down at the same time due to bad weather so companies like to have a minimum of two to three routes to mitigate against that.”
Sea Fibre Networks will lease capacity on its network to service providers on a wholesale basis, who will in turn sell connectivity on to customers.
In total there are 72 pairs of fibre cable available for use and Ms Hodnett said that depending on the sea’s conditions the cable should last 25 years.
She said the company, which is backed by CC Equity Investors and Investec to the tune of €100 million, expects to see a return on its investment after five years.
The CeltixConnect cable is the first new international telecoms link to Ireland since the completion of the 360 Networks transatlantic link in 2001.
With the Dublin to Holyhead cable now operational the company hopes to move ahead with plans for a connection between Cork and France, which is expected to cost about €40 million.
Ms Hodnett said the area, and companies based there, such as EMC and Apple, could benefit hugely from such a high-speed data connection.
A French connection would also create access to European cities such as Frankfurt without needing to go through Britain, as well as allowing connectivity to American-to-European cables such as Apollo.
“Normally you would have a second area where companies might cluster as often many want to live with a bit of distance from the capital city,” said Ms Hodnett. “A connection would really open up that region.”
