2020-11-25 add news item about cable extension to Copenhagen, add Bulk data center blog link 2019-06-04 add details of Bulk data center in Esbjerg and infrastructure, add local news items about construction start 2019-05-08 add system summary from FCC application, elaborate on landing point discrepancies between FCC/cablemap, link to docs describing seg. 5 cable lay schedule 2019-03-06 fix links to submarinecablemap.com and some press, add info from TE Subcom experience doc., some general touch ups 2019-01-22 change “Danish Press Coverage” to “National Press”, add “International Press”, add some National about datacenter prospects & International Press items about contractors choosen 2018-10-05 initial commit
Europe, Denmark and my local neighbourhood of Western Jutland is going to get its connectivity boosted by the Havfrue transatlantic cable system being built by a consortium consisting of Google, Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure. To quote the announcement done by Google;
To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland. This cable, called Havfrue (Danish for “mermaid”), will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to come online by the end of 2019. Google blog post, 2018-01-16
Digging into the details first reveals the projected trench as illustrated in below by some of the stakeholders;
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by cloud.google.com.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by TE SubCom.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by submarinecablemap.com.
EDIT 2020-11-25: Additionally in 2019-06-21 Interxion announced a direct connection between the AEC2 landing site in Blaabjerg to its two datacenters in Ballerup/Copenhagen.
More digging into the Danish parts reveals that most sources mention Blåbjerg (Blaabjerg) as the Danish landing point for Havfrue (just as TAT-14), although ComputerWorld DK (see National Press below) relays the information that it will land at Endrup (where COBRAcable is terminated). However, a FCC application dated 2018-05-25 SCL-00214S (pdf) refers to it as the “Havfrue system” and specifically states that a new cable landing station will be constructed in Blaabjerg (as well as in Leckanvy, Ireland and Kristiansand, Norway);
The Havfrue system will consist of three segments. (1) The Main Trunk will connect the existing cable landing station at Wall, New Jersey with a new cable landing station to be constructed at Blaabjerg, Denmark. (2) The Ireland Branch will connect a new cable landing station to be constructed at Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland with a branching unit on the Main Trunk. (3) The Norway Branch will connect a new cable landing station at Kristiansand, Norway with a branching unit on the Main Trunk.
Google is currently also projecting its own private subsea cables, some of the rationale behind their mixed private/consortium/lease approach are disclosed in blog post from 2018-07-17 announcing the Dunant cable, which is the first Google private transatlantic subsea cable projected to connect Virginia Beach and France.
EDIT 2020-11-25: see blog post detailing my visit to the construction site in June 2019
Bulk has announced that the Esbjerg data center location will be referred to as DK01 Campus which is described on the about page (EDIT 2020-11-25: now has its own page with different wording) as follows:
Bulk’s DK01 Campus, Esbjerg, southwest Denmark, will be a scalable Carrier Neutral Colocation data center ready for customers Q4 2019. Esbjerg is becoming a highly strategic data center location with several subsea fiber systems terminating within or nearby. These include Havfrue (US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark), Havhingsten (Ireland, Denmark), Cobra (Holland, Denmark), Skagerrak 4 (Norway Denmark), DANICE (Iceland, Denmark) and TAT-14 (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). Combined with excellent terrestrial connectivity, this will make Esbjerg the main international entry point to the Nordics and enable the Bulk DK01 campus to be the natural traffic exchange point.
An article (translated) in the local newspaper JydskeVestkysten first revealed the exact location of the center and renderings of its visual appearence and construction. The location is in Kjersing industrial area North of Esbjerg.
A further map of the Bulk connections between Norway, Denmark and Ireland has been revealed in an article of Capacitymedia and on Bulk’s own fiber networks page. Also a partnership with Amazon about delivering both connectivity and datacenter infrastructure for AWS has been announced.
2019-06-03 add (local|national) press items about bulk data center (follow this in post about Havfrue, no further updates here), minor text fixes 2019-03-07 add local and national press items announcing cancellation of project 2019-02-27 add local press item about property value, environmentalist opposition and local educational initiatives 2019-02-21 add local press item about unsatisfied land owners 2019-01-22 add official approval of plans, fix original chronology of Official Documentation items, add (local|national|international) press items about a.o. announcement of Bulk Infrastructure datacenter 2018-12-19 add documentation and local press items about postponed permit decision from municipality 2018-11-30 add a bunch of local press items, and archaeological section to documentation 2018-10-04 add local and national press item about Amsterdam trip and announcing Facebook as the developer 2018-09-06 add local press item about downscaling and older national press, reorder press items (top=latest) 2018-08-19 add local press item and Official Documentation section about housing abandonment 2018-08-01 add local press item with letter to editor 2018-06-13 updated with 1 new local + 1 new national press, rewrite first paragraphs, mention project name, mention DDI trade association, mention investindk & havfrue cable 2018-06-12 initial commit
The local media of Western Jutland, JydskeVestkysten, has spearheaded the coverage of an interesting technology related story over the last weeks. The Esbjerg municipality planning departments has started to reveal details of the preparations for the development of an industrial site on a large swath of land just outside of Esbjerg seemingly for the purpose of a hyperscale data center of the proportions employed by FANG sized (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) organizations. According to the media the project is by some municipal sources referred to as “Project Ember“. I have been unable to confirm this name from official documentation yet released or any other sources.
Neither the newly formed trade association named Danish Data Center Industry (DDI/DanishDCI) (in Danish: “Datacenter Industrien“) or the state’s Invest in Denmark office has brought any more light to the issue. The former has, however, tweeted a couple of times about it when it hit the national media and the latter has brought forward a vague hint that Western Denmark is an “attractive data centre hub“. I’m not in any doubt that this is partly driven by the announcement of the “HAVFRUE consortium“, which includes Facebook, that they intend to install a 108 Tb/s transatlantic cable crossing from New Jersey to Ireland and Esbjerg, as also announced by Invest in Denmark in January.
Below is an outline of the area in question (on an OpenStreetMap based map using the umap project) that I have drawn from the only geographical details yet leaked which is contained in the meeting agenda mentioned below. See also a visualisation of the area on a photo taken by local photographer Christer Holte.
I have collected links to all official documentation I have been able to locate and to press coverage below, and intend to keep updating this post as details is being revealed.
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Stumbled upon this slightly dated talk by Richard M. Stallman (aka. RMS) of GNU and FSF fame, in which my home country of Denmark is sadly referenced as only a “supposedly free country”.
“But censorship is wrong, of course, whether it is done on the internet or not. We used to think that the internet would protect us from censorship because it was too hard to censor the internet. But thanks to the efforts of various companies in the US, The UK, France and so on, it is now possible for governments to censor the internet and also surveil it completely, they just need to put enough effort in. And this is not limited to obvious tyrannies such as China and Iran. We see a lot of supposedly free countries imposing censorship on the internet. For instance, Denmark several years ago imposed filtering on the internet blocking a secret list of sites. The list was leaked and posted on WikiLeaks. Hooray for WikiLeaks! Whereupon Denmark blocked access to that page too. So everyone else could know what internet users in Denmark were blocked from seeing except those people.”
“But censorship is wrong, of course, whether it is done on the internet or not. We used to think that the internet would protect us from censorship because it was too hard to censor the internet. But thanks to the efforts of various companies in the US, The UK, France and so on, it is now possible for governments to censor the internet and also surveil it completely, they just need to put enough effort in. And this is not limited to obvious tyrannies such as China and Iran. We see a lot of supposedly free countries imposing censorship on the internet.
For instance, Denmark several years ago imposed filtering on the internet blocking a secret list of sites. The list was leaked and posted on WikiLeaks. Hooray for WikiLeaks! Whereupon Denmark blocked access to that page too. So everyone else could know what internet users in Denmark were blocked from seeing except those people.”
Sadly since this time it has not gotten any better. Most of the points RMS makes (the whole talk is worth a listen) are still valid and a grave concern from my perspective. The Danish internet (really DNS) blocking system has been broadened and the slippage that was feared has become a reality. Even though this issue has gotten some attention in the IT and rights communities the general public just doesn’t care.
The actual block is technically done through DNS blacklists that Danish ISP are legally required to implement. The list of blocked sites is available from the telecom trade organization “Telekommunikationsindustrien i Danmark” (English: Telecommunication’s Industry Association in Denmark) at teleindu.dk/brancheholdninger/blokeringer-pa-nettet/ and currently has 111 sites (csv) on active block.
As it being DNS based if you are impacted, workarounds do exist. However, my guess is that they will soon be able to actively shut down services physically located in Denmark.
Below are links to the full talk, and an inline/embedded player courtesey of youtube. Start time of all links are at starting point of above transcript.
When dealing with policy enforcement for products that you distribute from business partners and whose sales your organization directly profits from, you’d think that you’d want to engage in some kind of communication with your peers before making drastic moves like shutting down distribution of these products. Especially when your peer is a national lottery organization partly owned by a European state, who is strictly professional about their business and which probably has a non-significant turnover facilitated by the product.
Well, if your are Google and runs the Google Play software distribution system for the Android platform, you apparently couldn’t care less. At least that is what a move today by Google implies, when banning an Android gaming app by Danske Spil, the national Danish lottery, who has a governement enforced monopoly on lottery in Denmark. This was done without any interaction with Danske Spil which of course was taken by surprise when realizing this, as reported (GTrans) by Danish tech magazine Version2.
Admittedly, as it stands now from an objective point of view, the app clearly breaks the content policy of Google Play which states that “We don’t allow content or services that facilitate online gambling”. So the real question, apart from the peculiar behaviour of Google towards this app provider for Google Play, is for Danske Spil; “How on earth did you think you could distribute an app through Google Play which so blatantly is in direct violation of the content policy?”.
Maybe the endorsement by the Danish legislation has risen to their heads, making them think their monoploy in Denmark made them so special that they could ignore Google’s standard policies? The current response from Danske Spil is that the app had been previously “approved” by Google, whatever that means because to my knowledge there is no verification procedure as such for content on Google Play (that’s a point for further investigation when time permits) .
At the moment not only the app itself, but also the provider page for Danske Spil A/S is inaccessible at Google Play, even though marketing from Danske Spil still tries to lure new users to the lotteries provided by the app, both from the web, TV and electronic billboards.
If your business model relies on outside partners (and which doesn’t?), this might be a good occasion to take the time for a second thought about what dependencies it has. And especially who is in the power to pull the carpet below it without interacting with you.
If I had a business with parts, components or services not under my in complete control, I’d prefer a partner which had a fellow human representing him, with which I could meet and look into his eyes. That way a social bond is created, which hopefully increases the probability that I will know if anything is about to happen that affects my business.
Just saw the Google Street View car driving by at my daily whereabouts in Esbjerg, Denmark. Did get a little exhilerated and spilled some coffee in excitement and attempt to wave at the cameras (Hi mom!!) . Here’s a shot of the car taken by itself when passing my home at it’s last visit in 2009.
Apparently Google Streetview has started collecting data again here i Denmark, as they did in Norway, Sweden, Ireland and South Africa in July. Now with the Wi-Fi privacy issue resolved.
The following netfrenzy brought me to the official schedule at http://www.google.dk/help/maps/streetview/where-is-street-view.html which shows some mid to large sized cities in Denmark beeing up for an update, including Esbjerg. Strangely I haven’t noticed any lack of imagery in my local area. I know that most of Denmark was beeing photographed during July and August 2009, so something must be missing, or of inferior quality since they are coming back.
I also found a fun Street View Partner site; Legoland in California has allowed Street View to take a tour through the park. Fun for me, because the Lego Group HQ and original Legoland Billund is close to Esbjerg, and I have been going there regularly wiht the kids. Going to be fun to take them for a virtual walk in the park in California ;). The Billund park doesn’t seem to have been mapped internally, though.
Also a hilarious joke on Google Streetview from an interesting group of people; The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab. Will be digging these nutty people out for sure.
