Current issue

Greenland in the centre of the world

Jørn Jespersen

Abstract

The Tele Greenland company vision “Greenland in the centre of the world” is unfolding these years, where massive investments in platforms and infrastructure are providing the 56,000 Greenlandic inhabitants with state of the art telecom services at affordable prices. The company vision states that one can live and work with even conditions whether you are based in Ilulissat, Hamburg or Copenhagen. This vision challenges the tough conditions for operating a telecom business in a huge arctic country hosting 17 cities and 55 settlements scattered across the coast embracing the inland icecap. Greenland has a geographic area of 2,166,086 km² and the ice free land area is 410,449 km². The distance from North to South is 2,670 km. Deployment and commissioning in the field are extremely cumbersome in rural arctic areas where sites only can be reached in the short summer and even then only by helicopter.