Amazon has applied to lay its first undersea transatlantic internet cable

Amazon intends to lay a submarine cable from the south coast of Ireland to the east coast of the United States. According to bloggers and local media, Amazon’s Irish division submitted an application to the local regulator last summer describing the company’s plans, Datacenter Dynamics reports.

Amazon MCS Ireland Ltd. intends to conduct geophysical surveys in County Cork to select the cable route and the location of the landing station for the future fiber-optic line. The cable would be laid from the village of Castlefreke to an as yet unselected point in the eastern United States. The application mentions two potential landfalls for the cable in Ireland. More detailed information about the cable capacity and project implementation time has not been disclosed.

According to Telegeography, Amazon is a co-owner and primary user of Havfrue (AEC-2), Hawaiki, Jupiter and Marea cables. AEC-2 links Ireland, Norway and Denmark and the USA. Together with Vodafone, work is underway on the Beaufort cable, designed to connect Ireland and the UK. Previously it was expected that it would start operating in 2024. However, Amazon lags behind Google and Meta✴ in terms of the number of its own submarine cable systems.

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Most submarine cables exit in Ireland in the vicinity of the capital, Dublin. The only cable coming ashore in County Cork at the Cork Internet eXchange/CloudCIX station is Exa’s Exa Express. The 53Tbps cable system launched in 2015 as a digital bridge between Ireland, the UK and Canada. According to experts, having a different cable route from other cables will improve the reliability of the connection of Irish AWS data centers.