In Bjørndalen, Norway, a Small Cabin Enjoys Some of the World's Fastest Internet

On a cold shore in the icy archipelago of Svalbard, a relative stone's throw from the North Pole, a small cabin belonging to Svein Nordahl is a hive of activity. He has no running water and not one of Svalbard's 31 miles of roads stretches as far as Bjørndalen, the small community of scattered shacks where he has made his home. But the isolated outpost has been fitted with some of the highest quality Internet available, allowing Nordahl and his neighbors lightning-quick access to the World Wide Web. Nordahl lives in a 750-square-foot cabin built on the tip of a rock that juts out into a body of water known as Ice Fjord. When he got wind of plans by Telenor A to bring fiber-optic broadband to every household in Longyearbyen, Svalbard's main hub of 2,000 people located 5 miles to the southwest, he began hatching a moonshot plan to get in on the action. But there was a problem. Given his distance from Longyearbyen, Nordahl and those in neighboring cabins were to be left in the cold on this project. Still, the former schoolbook translator marched up to the local Telenor office and made a blunt demand: "I want to have fiber in my cabin."