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OTTAWA — The head of a company trying to lay a broadband fibre optic cable along the Northwest Passage — a project that would connect Tokyo to London — says the project may not go ahead unless the Canadian government becomes a major customer.

After three years of lobbying — and an appeal directly to Prime Minister Stephen Harper — the federal government doesn’t appear ready to do what Arctic Fibre is asking it to: Switch over three-quarters of its Internet services in the North to broadband cable from satellite services.

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“To date we’ve been unable to secure orders from the federal government,” said Arctic Fibre CEO Doug Cunningham.

“There has to be some sort of government support to make it economically viable.”

The project calls for a 15,000-kilometre undersea cable running from Japan to the coast of Alaska, then under the sea ice across Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern Quebec, known as Nunavik, before heading across the Atlantic Ocean to the U.K.