Construction of a new subsea cable linking Ireland to the UK has started, says CeltixConnect, a privately held Irish firm behind the project.

The announcement follows 18 months of “permitting process”, says Tom McMahon, and signifies the final required regulatory application for the project.

According to CeltixConnect, the cable will land “directly in the heart of Dublin’s business district at East Point Business Part and the Irish Financial Services Centre, connecting from there to the T50, Dublin’s major metropolitan network.” In the UK, the system is intended to land at Holyhead and connect to the Welsh Assembly funded project, “Fibre Speed,” an open access fibre optic network that connects Holyhead to Manchester, as well as a number of other backbone networks that connect into London and mainland Europe, the company said.

”No new Irish sub-sea cable system has been built since 2000 and currently most of the existing sub-sea cable systems face near technical obsolescence and natural end of life. As such, until now Ireland risked facing the possibility of becoming a marooned digital island,” CelixConnect commercial director, Diane Hodnett, said. “CeltixConnect’s pioneering sub-sea dark fibre business model, where each fibre is capable of carrying up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps), the equivalent of 480 hours of video per second, will offer customers increased reliability, security, scalability and technical longevity at a competitive price.”

The company says the new system will be available as leased or purchased dark fibre, or as high capacity managed services.