Argentina

A single cable, a long coastline

Argentina's Atlantic coastline stretches for thousands of kilometres, yet the submarine cable register documents only one system serving the country: ATLANTIS-2 (also written ATLANTIS II), an active cable running approximately 12,000 kilometres. Its Argentine landing point is Las Toninas, a coastal locality in Buenos Aires Province that has served as the country's primary subsea gateway to international bandwidth.

The ATLANTIS-2 system connects South America with Europe and other points along the Atlantic basin, giving Argentina a path to transatlantic capacity that would otherwise require routing through satellite links or terrestrial transit across neighbouring countries. For a nation of Argentina's size and economic weight in Latin America, that connection matters considerably.

What a single cable implies

Relying on one documented submarine cable creates a straightforward resilience problem. Any unplanned outage — whether from a ship's anchor, a submarine landslide, or a fault in the cable plant — leaves Argentina without a redundant undersea route while repairs are arranged. Transoceanic cable repairs can take weeks depending on vessel availability and the location of the fault, meaning single-cable dependency carries real risk for latency-sensitive traffic and high-volume data flows alike.

The Las Toninas landing station does sit on open Atlantic coast rather than in a congested port approach, which reduces some anchor-drag risk, but geography alone cannot substitute for route diversity. Countries with multiple cable systems landing at geographically separated points can reroute traffic automatically; Argentina's documented configuration does not currently afford that option.

Geography and the terrestrial alternative

Argentina shares long borders with Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay, and terrestrial fibre links across those borders provide a measure of practical redundancy. Traffic can reach Brazilian cable landing stations — a far more densely served hub for South American subsea connectivity — via overland routes. That path adds latency and introduces its own points of failure, but it is a real operational fallback rather than a theoretical one.

Chile's Pacific-facing cable landings represent another indirect option, reached via the Andes crossings that carry existing terrestrial infrastructure. The additional distance and routing complexity make these paths less attractive for latency-sensitive applications, but they underpin the broader resilience picture for Argentine operators.

Register note

The Coral Sea Cables register continues to be compiled. Additional systems serving Argentina, or planned cables with Argentine landing points, will be added as documentation is confirmed.