Norway to Wire North Pole

TomMajor writes "Norway will lay an underwater fiber-optic cable from the mainland to Svalbard and turn remote Longyearbyen into the world's best connected village, providing residents with 100 TV stations and a full VDSL (very high bit-rate DSL) network..."

Oil money?

[KeyserDK]

Easy when you have the (oil) money Norway has ;)

Regards
An almost envy dane.

Re:Oil money?

[Pall Agamemnides]

An envious Dane, eh? Obligatory Shakespeare quote:

Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him.
(Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII)

Re:Oil money?

[MasterofVoid]

If I remember correctly the Norse doesnt use their oil money. They put it in a big pile for when the oil runs out..

Come one come all!

[Joe the Lesser]

*Bob Marley playing in background*

[Jamaican accent]Come visit the beautiful sunny island of Svalbard and it's coastal villege Longyearbyen. It's always a blast, with fresh fish and internet access![/Jamaican accent]

How many people live there?

[Isbiten]

If their going to spend 20Million $ on it...

Re:How many people live there?

[Man Eating Duck]

The article states that one of the goals is to provide fast transfer from Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat) to customers in Europe and USA.

The Norwegian Space Center is behind the project.

What North Pole?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no North Pole in this story except the title. Makes TomMajor look like quite a sucker.

Re:What North Pole?

[Anonymous Coward]

Svalbard is almost at the North Pole. I believe it is actually as close to the North Pole as anyone permenantly lives (ie closer than anyone gets except on expeditions).

Re:What North Pole?

[Elderly Isaac]

It's still 800 miles away. The story title is definitely sensationalized.

North Pole isn't in Norway!

[psyconaut]

Isn't the (magnetic) North Pole in Canadian arctic waters? (Bear in mind there is no land mass North Pole!).

-psy

Hosers vs Vikings

[Anonymous Coward]

It's back in Norway, eh. Erik the Redbeard lifted up that pole out of the snow, sailed home to Norway, and planted it there. Doug MacKenzie is calling for a back-bacon embargo of Norway, eh.

The poster got the wrong end of the stick

[psyconaut]

The idea is NOT to necessarily make this the best wired remote village, it's to BACKHAUL data from the satellite station that's located there. (If you read the story this becomes blatantly obvious).

Providing connectivity for the village is just a (happy) side effect. I mean, did anyone really believe the Norweigan's were spending USD$40m to provide connectivity to 1700 people?

-psy

E-mail to Santa

[AtariAmarok]

What does this mean other than no need anymore to trust third parties when you want to get e-mail to Santa.

And all those elves will be able to download elf-pr0n a lot faster.

Re:E-mail to Santa

[Oscar_Wilde]

And all those elves will be able to download elf-pr0n a lot faster.

No they'll be able to distribute it a lot faster. (which other group of elves is there that could be producing it)...

Re:E-mail to Santa

[darkeye]

Santa doesn't live in Norway, he lives in Finland, near Rovaniemi...

Grrr

[(trb001)]

So the north pole will now have better connectivity than parts of Loudon County, Va. Think Norway would be interesetd in hooking us up?

--trb

Stop your whining.

[Eevee]

You got flush toilets last year, what more do you want?

Great!

[Photar]

Maybe now Santa will return some of my emails!

Longyearbyen?

[booch]

That really sounds like a made-up name. And if it's in the Arctic Circle, shouldn't it be Longdaybyen?

Re:Longyearbyen?

[barakn]

From infoplease.com:

Longyearbyen , town and administrative center of Svalbard, on Isfjorden, Spitsbergen island. It is a coal-mining settlement, founded (1905) by an American company and named after the American miner J. M. Longyear. Its coal mines were transferred to a Norwegian company in 1916. It was destroyed (Sept., 1943) by German battleships but was quickly rebuilt.

Re:Longyearbyen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and "byen" in Longyearbyen is the word for "city" or "town" in norwegian. So it sort of means "The Longyear Town", directly translated.

VDSL?

[Beatbyte]

Sort of strange to spend all that money then put the end users on VDSL. It's only got 1.5KM distance and 15Mbps. And we all know how reliable the great DSL is, I'm sure subzero temperatures won't affect it :\

Good for complaining, anyhow

[bill_mcgonigle]

Now I can call the phone company and say, "They've got DSL at the North Pole but you still can't figure out how to run it up my street?

Cabin Fever

[Bowling Moses]

This should help out a bit with cabin fever. I've lived in some cold places (upper Midwest) but damn. I imagine their problems with depression and suicide increase dramatically in the winter, so now they've got something to do. Now that I think about it, they already had one thing to do so I wonder how much the birth rate will decrease about 9 months after winter, now that they've got high-speed internet access (and pr0n).