Guatemala
Guatemala reaches the global submarine network through two active cables linking it to North America, the Caribbean and beyond — a modest but functional foundation for a Central American economy with growing connectivity demands.
Connectivity at a glance
- Cable systems
- 2active
- Landing points
- 0
- Resilience score
- 18
Cable systems serving Guatemala
| Cable | Status | Ready for service | Length | Design capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| America Movil Submarine Cable System-1 (AMX-1) | active | RFS 2014 | — | — |
| ARCOS-1 | active | — | — | — |
Landing points
Landing point records for Guatemala are being compiled.
Cables serving Guatemala
Two active submarine cable systems connect Guatemala to the international network: the America Movil Submarine Cable System-1 (AMX-1), which entered service in 2014, and ARCOS-1, whose ready-for-service date is not yet confirmed in this register. Both are listed as active, giving Guatemala at least a degree of redundancy that single-cable nations lack — though the picture depends heavily on how those systems are routed and where their landing infrastructure sits.
Specific landing point locations for Guatemala are not yet documented in this register. That gap matters, because the resilience value of multiple cables diminishes sharply if they share the same coastal landing site or converge on the same terrestrial backhaul corridor inland. Central American geography — a narrow isthmus traversed by mountain ranges — can make terrestrial diversity as much of a constraint as the marine segments themselves.
What the cable mix implies
AMX-1 is an America Movil-backed system, which places Guatemala's largest cable link within a carrier-owned infrastructure framework — common across Latin America, where dominant telecoms operators have anchored their own international capacity rather than relying solely on open consortium cables. ARCOS-1 is a ring system that spans the Caribbean basin and connects to multiple landing points across the region and into North America, offering a geographically distinct path.
Having two cables with different ownership structures and, in all likelihood, different routing geometries is a better baseline than many countries in the region can claim. Whether that translates into genuine competitive diversity at the wholesale and retail level depends on access arrangements that fall outside the scope of this register.
Geography and its constraints
Guatemala's Pacific and Caribbean coastlines in principle allow for cable landings on both seaboards, which could support genuinely diverse routing. A cable reaching the Pacific coast connects into a different set of onward routes than one landing on the Caribbean side — potentially a meaningful advantage for traffic destined for North America, South America or transpacific endpoints.
The inland link between any coastal landing station and Guatemala City, the country's main traffic hub, is a further variable. As landing point data for Guatemala is compiled into this register, the relationship between coastal infrastructure and inland network topology will come into clearer focus.