It was a drastic experience which made pretty clear how remote and potentially vulnerable the communities in Spitsbergen still are: on Monday, almost 2 weeks ago (02 June), the communication between Spitsbergen and the outside world broke completely down for a couple of hours.
Some years ago, fibre cables between Spitsbergen and Norway have replaced earlier communication systems. The need to transfer large data volumes that come from satellite antennas near Longyearbyen (SvalSat, the white balls on Platåberget above the airport) to customers including ESA and NASA has made the cables necessary.
The high technology superfast connection failed completely on said Monday: the whole traffic between Spitsbergen and the rest of the world went down for several hours because of a problem in a relay station in Andenes (Vesterålen, north Norway), where the fibre cable reaches the mainland. The whole technical infrastructure is double to compensate for technical problems with parts of the system, but this time, the whole thing was dead for a while.
This did not just cut Longyearbyens inhabitants off from telephone and internet, but it made it impossible to reach police, rescue services and other vital services and infrastructure and it largely shut down internal communication within these bodies. The hospital in Longyearbyen relies on communication with the university hospital in Tromsø and the constant availability of air transport of patients to mainland Norway in difficult cases. Satellite phones were quickly put into use, but they require a view to the sky without any obstructions, which does not exactly apply to a medical doctor’s work place. Plus, there are many of them in Longyearbyen, and also this line of communication turned out unable to serve the amount of traffic: it was at times simply impossible to get through. Even in normal times, satellite phones are not exactly reliable.
The problem was solved after a few hours, but it made the potential for disaster quite clear. Especially representatives of vital infrastructure and public services such as police, rescue service and hospital made it clear that the availability of communication is of high importance for public safety and health.
Telenor, the Norwegian provider of communication services and infrastructure, is now working with authorities to make sure this does not happen again. But there is now talking about leaving some of the good old landline phones in place. Longyearbyen, because of its size, technical infrastructure and political circumstances a very modern place, is intended to be one of the first places in Norway without a landline phone system, where all communication is based on a mobile grid. The recent incident will be part of this debate, that’s for sure.
Works always: fire- and explosion-proof phone in Barentsburg. The problem is, you won’t get far with it …