Korda Maps Auður From Meðalland to Irvine Bay

Korda has fixed Auður’s landings at Meðalland, south of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, and at Irvine Bay on the Firth of Clyde. The Icelandic operator, which absorbed Farice in October, also plans a Glasgow service point for traffic into London, Ireland, the Nordics and the rest of Europe. Seabed surveys are due in summer 2027, and service is expected around the turn of 2029 to 2030.

Meðalland and Irvine Bay Are Now on the Map

On October 21, 2026, Korda named the two beaches that the April plan had left blank. In Iceland the cable will come ashore at Meðalland on the south coast. In Scotland it will land at Irvine Bay, west of Glasgow, rather than at a new station in Edinburgh or at the old FARICE-1 beach in Caithness.

A tender for onshore fibre from Meðalland is already open, with construction of those routes planned to start in summer 2027, the same season as the marine survey. Pioneer Consulting is lead adviser. The firm will run tenders and pick contractors for survey work, cable manufacture and laying, then stay on through construction.

The beaches do not make a live circuit. No survey ship has gone out, no factory has drawn the fibre, and no installer has a lay contract. What October locked is the geography of a successor to FARICE-1, the two-pair system Farice lit in January 2004.

The 2004 Cable Auður Is Built to Replace

FARICE-1 runs 1,205 km from Seyðisfjörður on Iceland’s east coast to Dunnet Bay in Caithness, with a branch into Funningsfjørður in the Faroe Islands. Pirelli, now ASN, built the wet plant. TYCO, now SubCom, supplied the original terminals. Design capacity at launch was 720 Gb/s on two fibre pairs.

In August 2013 Farice put Ciena 100G coherent kit on that system and on almost 800 km of land backhaul between Reykjavík, Keflavík and Dunnet Bay. The coherent upgrade on the 2004 cable raised design capacity to 10 Tb/s. Service that once stopped at Edinburgh was extended to London Telehouse on redundant UK routes. As of 2023, Farice said FARICE-1 had never had a cable cut.

That path is 22 years old. It still works. It is also the wrong shape for the traffic Farice now sells. Seyðisfjörður sits far from the south-west data centre belt. Dunnet Bay sits at the top of Scotland, a long terrestrial haul from London. Auður is the planned successor, named for Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir, the ninth-century settler who sailed from Scotland to Iceland in the sagas.

The time has come to further strengthen Iceland’s telecommunications infrastructure by building a new high-capacity cable. Through the new cable we will create a new low latency route between Iceland and Europe’s key network hubs as well and further strengthen the digital bridge within the Nordics.

Thorvardur Sveinsson, chief executive of Farice, April 2026

He also said Icelandic data centres should sit inside network maps that bridge the United States and the Nordic market. The April notice put that load on 16 to 24 fibre pairs, not on another two-pair plant in Caithness.

Farice, 112 and a New Name on the Door

The company on the October notice is not the Farice of the April letterhead. Korda Networks launched on September 1, 2026, as a merger of Farice with Öryggisfjarskipti and the technical operations of Neyðarlínan, Iceland’s 112 emergency service. On October 5, 2026, Korda said that merger was complete and that the combined firm had begun operating under the new name.

Farice, founded in 2002 and wholly owned by the Icelandic state, already ran FARICE-1, DANICE and IRIS. Korda keeps those cables and adds the critical-comms work that is supposed to keep essential services up when ordinary networks fail, and to keep vessels reachable in Icelandic waters. The carrier side still sells connectivity from Icelandic data centres and the main local exchanges through the same submarine plant.

Auður is therefore a state operator’s replacement job, not a private disruptor’s first beach. The IRIS system, Farice’s third cable, needed a state capital increase that the EFTA Surveillance Authority treated as aid. The April Auður plan said the company aimed to finance the new system without the state treasury. That pledge has not been restated as a signed funding package, and it has not been withdrawn.

How the South Coast and the Clyde Change the Route

The new path leaves the east fjords and the Pentland Firth. Meðalland sits on Iceland’s south coast, in the same broad band as DANICE’s Landeyjar station and IRIS at Þorlákshöfn, while Irvine Bay puts the UK end on the Clyde instead of Caithness. Farice told industry press in April that the wet route would run about 1,300 km from southern Iceland to the Firth of Clyde, with another 40 to 50 km into Glasgow.

ICELAND’S EUROPE CABLES, SIDE BY SIDE

Farice’s own history treated the split between an east-coast landing and a south-coast landing as a hedge against natural hazards. DANICE, it said, had never had a cable cut as of 2023. Auður repeats that southern habit. It does not add a second east-fjord door. Seyðisfjörður remains the 2004 entrance until FARICE-1 is retired.

The Scottish shift is sharper. Dunnet Bay sits on the north coast, with a long land haul that Farice later had to harden toward London. Irvine Bay is a west-coast landfall for a Glasgow point of presence. The April plan still allowed Edinburgh. October closed that fork. The central-belt hub is Glasgow, and the beach is on the Clyde.

April and October notices do not name a Faroe landing on Auður. FARICE-1’s branch into Funningsfjørður is still the Faroese spur on this operator’s map. Whether that spur lives on as a legacy system, gets a later add-on, or is wound down with FARICE-1 is not in the landing notice.

What 16 to 24 Fibre Pairs Would Add

Farice sized Auður at 16 to 24 fibre pairs, which it put at 320 to 480 Tbps of design capacity, a jump from FARICE-1’s two pairs and from IRIS, a six-pair trunk. That is a replacement spec, not a like-for-like swap of the 2004 plant. It is also still a paper spec. No supplier has been named for the wet cable.

IRIS, the newest live system, went into commercial service on March 1, 2023. The six-fibre IRIS system into Galway is 1,700 km long and uses Ciena WaveLogic 5 Extreme optics at 500 Gb/s line rates, 22 Tb/s per pair, 132 Tb/s in total. Farice said Dublin sits about 10 ms from Iceland on that path. Ciena also rebuilt terrestrial IRIS and DANICE routes in Iceland into a protected ring.

DANICE, lit in September 2009, is 2,304 km from southern Iceland to Blaabjerg in Denmark, with four pairs. A 2023 Ciena flexgrid upgrade took its ceiling to about 40 Tb/s. Stack those live systems and Farice already sells Ireland, Denmark and a thin Scotland path. Auður’s extra pairs are aimed at data centre growth that the 2004 cable was never built to carry, and at a lower-latency UK door than Dunnet Bay can offer.

The pair math is the tell. Sixteen pairs at the 20 Tbps implied by Farice’s 320 Tbps floor already dwarf IRIS. Twenty-four pairs at 480 Tbps would be a different class of plant. None of that capacity is lit. It is the envelope Korda is taking to manufacturers.

Glasgow Takes the Hub Edinburgh Was Offered

The service delivery point is the part of the October notice that will matter to carriers. Korda plans to stand up a Glasgow site and sell onwards from there. Irvine Bay is how the wet cable reaches that building. Edinburgh, listed as an equal option in April, is not the chosen hub.

ONWARD ROUTES KORDA SAYS GLASGOW WILL SELL

• London: The same UK end-market FARICE-1 already reaches via land routes from Caithness, now from the Clyde.
• Ireland: A second British landing that can turn toward Dublin without riding IRIS into Galway.
• Nordic networks: The “digital bridge within the Nordics” Sveinsson put on the April call, alongside DANICE’s Denmark path.
• Continental Europe: April named Amsterdam among the hubs; October grouped the continent as a Glasgow onward.

That list is a product description, not a signed interconnect schedule. Glasgow already sits on dense UK fibre toward London and on paths that can turn west toward Ireland. A Clyde landing shortens the walk from the beach to those routes. A Caithness landing does not. Scottish business posts that picked up the Pioneer notice on October 22 repeated the late 2029 or early 2030 date and the Glasgow hub. They did not argue Irvine versus Edinburgh. The fight, such as it was, ended when Korda picked the Clyde.

No Cable Ships Until the 2027 Survey

October added beaches, a consultant and an onshore tender. It did not move steel. Pioneer Consulting, a Hoboken firm that has completed more than 160 submarine projects, will help Korda choose between turnkey and disaggregated delivery and then run the bid rooms for survey, manufacture and installation. Cable factories and lay ships are busy. That is why a consultant is on the job before a vessel is.

AUÐUR FROM ANNOUNCEMENT TO PLANNED SERVICE

1. April 24, 2026: Farice unveils Auður as a south-Iceland-to-Scotland cable, with a service point in Glasgow or Edinburgh, 16 to 24 fibre pairs, and a marine survey in summer 2027.
2. September 1, 2026: Korda Networks launches as the merger of Farice, Öryggisfjarskipti and Neyðarlínan’s technical operations.
3. October 5, 2026: Korda says the merger is complete and the combined company is operating under the new name.
4. October 21, 2026: Korda names Meðalland and Irvine Bay, confirms a Glasgow service point, and says an onshore-fibre tender from Meðalland is under way.
5. Summer 2027: Marine survey of the route, and planned start of onshore fibre construction from the Icelandic landing.
6. Turn of 2029 to 2030: Expected entry into service, a target rather than a ready-for-service date.

Until those 2027 surveys are done, the line on a map is still a corridor, not a buried route. Manufacture and lay sit behind the survey and the supplier awards Pioneer has yet to run. FARICE-1, DANICE and IRIS remain the live plant. The new beaches are named, the Glasgow hub is the chosen UK door, and the first ships are a summer 2027 job.