WATERY WEB
A TORONTO FIRM PLANS A FASTER FIBRE LINK WITH NEW YORK, UNDER LAKE ONTARIO TO BUFFALO.
Lagging Internet connections can mean big problems for businesses that rely on speedy transactions or massive data transfers, but one Toronto startup has plans to provide a better connection between Canada and the U.S. with what it believes is the first major submarine cable through one of the Great Lakes.
Crosslake Fibre Inc. announced Tuesday it’s moving forward with plans to build a submarine fi bre cable through Lake Ontario from Toronto to Buffalo, an underwater, long-haul, highcapacity connection that will shorten the usual path around the lakes for Internet traffic headed south — often with a final destination of New York City.
“There are other ways to get from Canada to the U. S., but going across Lake Ontario gets us there in a more direct fashion in a physically diverse path,” chief executive Mike Cunningham said in an interview.
The unique path helps eliminate risk for customers in case of failure along one of the other routes across bridges or through the tunnel in Windsor, Ont., plus it comes with faster speeds given traffic moves along a shorter path, Cunningham said. A more direct route means low latency, which is critical for financial transactions.
“The financial markets are definitely a benefactor of this route,” Cunningham said.
Known as dark fibre, the infrastructure is built by Crossfire, which then sells indefeasible rights of service for 15 years to customers — namely large enterprises such as financial institutions that want control over their own networks or international telecommunications carriers that don’t own cables in Canada.
Crosslake has already signed on a major customer — Cunningham wouldn’t reveal who — and as such has the capital to start detailed engineering, permitting and marine survey work. The project will cost in the “multiple tens of millions” of dollars, he said.
Ultimately, Cunningham said dark fibre cables lower the cost of Internet transit by deflating the cost of capacity. While a residential customer may not see the difference, it could be meaningful for enterprises.
The idea of a Lake Ontario cable has been in the works for a couple years as demand rises for increased capacity out of Toronto, Cunningham said. There’s not a lot of dark fibre available, he added, which helped push the project forward fast enough that he expects it will be complete by fall 2018.
“As far as a subsea cable project, this is a quick turnaround,” he said.
The project could fail to get the necessary permits, but Cunningham said the “risk is as low as it gets” given regulations on both sides of the border.
Crosslake was created in October 2016 for the sole purpose of pursuing this project. Cunningham was previously the CEO of Arctic Fibre, a company that pushed a submarine fibre optic cable connecting Asia to Europe via Alaska and Nunavut. It was eventually acquired by Alaska-based Quintillion Subsea Holdings, which is moving forward with the Alaskan section of the fibre network.
Nunavut, meanwhile, remains without fibre.