SHEFA-2 is an undersea communication cable linking the Faroe Islands

Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...

 to mainland Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 via the Northern Isles

Northern Isles

The Northern Isles is a chain of islands off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The climate is cool and temperate and much influenced by the surrounding seas. There are two main island groups: Shetland and Orkney...

. It is named after the route on which it is being deployed (SHEtland-FAroes) and succeeds an earlier cable called SHEFA-1 on the same route.

SHEFA-2 runs from Tórshavn

Tórshavn

Tórshavn is the capital and largest town of the Faroe Islands. It is located in the southern part on the east coast of Streymoy. To the north west of the town lies the high mountain Húsareyn, and to the southwest, the high Kirkjubøreyn...

 in the Faroe Islands to Maywick in Shetland, then from Sandwick

Sandwick, Shetland

Sandwick is a township in the Shetland Islands, situated 13 miles south of Lerwick in the South Mainland. It comprises a number of distinct settlements in very close proximity to each other, each remaining distinct through being separated by agricultural land...

 in Shetland onwards to Ayre of Cara in Orkney, and from Manse Bay in Orkney to Banff

Banff, Aberdeenshire

Banff is a town in the Banff and Buchan area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Banff is situated on Banff Bay and faces the town of Macduff across the estuary of the River Deveron...

 in Aberdeenshire

Aberdeenshire

Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 unitary council areas in Scotland and a lieutenancy area.The present day Aberdeenshire council area does not include the City of Aberdeen, now a separate council area, from which its name derives. Together, the modern council area and the city formed historic...

, on mainland Scotland. Establishing the SHEFA-2 cable took less than two years, from the planning of the project in June 2006 until March 2008, when the cable became ready for use.

SHEFA-1 was deployed from 1971 to 1994, when CANTAT-3

CANTAT-3

CANTAT-3 is the third Canadian transatlantic telecommunications cable, in operation from 1994, initially carrying 3 x 2.5 Gbit/s between Canada and Europe...

 (the fibre-optic submarine cable between Canada and Europe, with branches to both Iceland and the Faroe Islands), was established. It was a coaxial cable

Coaxial cable

Coaxial cable, or coax, has an inner conductor surrounded by a flexible, tubular insulating layer, surrounded by a tubular conducting shield. The term coaxial comes from the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing the same geometric axis...

 with 120 channels, carrying 120 telephone conversations at a time.

SHEFA-2 is a fibre-optic submarine cable and the capacity with today’s technology is 57x10 gigabit

Gigabit

The gigabit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix giga is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 109 , and therefore...

s per second. The total length of the cable is around 1000 km. SHEFA-2 includes the world’s longest purely passive optical fibre cable link (390km), entirely without amplifiers. With no submarine repeaters and no power feeds, repair and maintenance of the submarine cable is minimized. At the same time, the solution is future proof, as the end-point technology is the only item in need of change to increase the capacity.