Circe North

Overview

Circe North is a short regional submarine cable connecting the Netherlands and the United Kingdom across the southern North Sea. Spanning 203 kilometres, it forms a direct link between the two countries and serves one of Europe's most active cross-channel telecommunications corridors. The cable is jointly owned by Zayo and euNetworks, both established providers of fibre network infrastructure in Europe.

Route and Landings

In the Netherlands, the cable lands at Zandvoort, a coastal location on the North Sea shore west of Amsterdam. In the United Kingdom, the cable comes ashore at Lowestoft, on the Suffolk coast of eastern England.

Ownership and Operators

Circe North is owned by Zayo and euNetworks. Zayo operates a broad fibre and network infrastructure business across Europe and North America, while euNetworks focuses on bandwidth infrastructure serving data centres and carriers across European cities.

Status and Timeline

Circe North entered service in 1999 and remains an active cable system connecting the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Regional Context

The Netherlands–United Kingdom corridor is served by several submarine cable systems of varying scale and reach. Circe North, at 203 kilometres, is among the shorter systems in this space, oriented toward direct intra-European connectivity rather than intercontinental routing. Longer systems such as Atlantic Crossing-1 (AC-1), which also lands in both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and transatlantic or intercontinental cables such as Apollo and EXA North and South, operate in the same general corridor but serve fundamentally different distance profiles.

Performance measurements over the last 60 days, drawn from 151 ping tests, show an average round-trip latency of 25.7 milliseconds, with a best recorded result of 14.3 milliseconds. These figures reflect the cable's short physical span across the North Sea.

Strategic Role

By directly linking Zandvoort in the Netherlands with Lowestoft in the United Kingdom, Circe North provides a dedicated subsea path between two of Europe's prominent network hubs. Its relatively compact length of 203 kilometres, combined with measured latency performance, makes it a practical route for traffic exchanged between the Dutch and British portions of the European network. The two-landing configuration keeps the system straightforward, with connectivity concentrated at a single point in each country.