(Telecompaper) Alcatel-Lucent and Cinia Group announced an agreement to deploy an undersea cable system providing the first direct cable link between the Nordic region and continental Europe. The project, named Sea Lion, plans to deploy a new 100G system that will span more than 1,100 km from Helsinki in Finland to the Rostock-Ribnitz area in Germany by early 2016. The aim is to strengthen the provision of reliable and secure broadband connectivity for cloud and data centre applications. Designed with an ultimate capacity of 15 Tbps, Sea Lion is part of the Finnish government's strategic plan to enhance the country's international data transfer capacity. The data will be transported across the country through the Finnish fibre-optic network running along the national rail infrastructure.