Arctic fiber optic!

According to the Anchorage Daily News, two Alaska Native village corporations and a multi-national corporation are planning to build a 10,000-mile-long fiber optic data line between Tokyo and London. The line will be the first to traverse the Arctic and run through the Northwest Passage. The planned route will link to Alaska in two places, Dutch Harbor and Prudhoe Bay. And that could end up bringing screaming-fast internet connections to parts of Alaska that don't have access or that suffer with satellite connections that can be even slower than dial-up. The project's estimated cost is $1 billion, and if funding can be secured for the Alaska portion of the line, work would be able to start next year, to be completed in 2013. Read much more here. And, read an IP industry article on the same topic from TMCnet, here.