United States

A hub at both ends of the ocean

Few countries sit as centrally in the global submarine cable map as the United States. Its coastlines face both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the cable systems documented here reflect that dual orientation — transatlantic routes cluster along the northeastern seaboard, while Pacific-facing systems come ashore on the California and Oregon coasts.

The Atlantic side carries the heavier load by cable count. Systems including TAT-14, AC-1, Apollo, AEConnect, Havfrue/AEConnect-2, Grace Hopper, TGN Atlantic, and 360atlantic (Hibernia Atlantic) all terminate somewhere along the US East Coast, with New Jersey — particularly the Wall Township, Manasquan and Tuckerton corridors — functioning as the dominant landing zone. Virginia Beach and New York's Shirley (home to the Brookhaven Cable Station) add further diversity to that eastern shore. The concentration of landing infrastructure in New Jersey is a quirk of geography and history: the state's relatively shallow nearshore waters and proximity to major financial centres made it an early and persistent favourite for cable operators.

On the Pacific side, Bandon in Oregon and San Luis Obispo in California serve as landing points, connecting the US to the Southern Cross Cable system, which bridges to Australia and New Zealand, and to the America Movil Submarine Cable System-1, which extends toward Latin America. The transpacific presence documented here is thinner than the Atlantic complement, though the landing points themselves remain strategically significant.

The cable mix spans generations of technology. The China-US Cable Network, which entered service in 1999, is now retired — a reminder that cable infrastructure turns over on decade-scale timescales. The Monet system, ready for service in 2017, and the Southern Cross Cable, active since 2000, bracket a period of substantial capacity growth across both ocean basins.

One planned system, SAex (South Atlantic Express Cable), points toward a less conventional routing — a South Atlantic path that would diversify connectivity beyond the well-trodden North Atlantic corridors.

Resilience and redundancy

The sheer number of active systems gives the United States a level of redundancy that most countries cannot approach. No single cable failure would meaningfully impair national connectivity; traffic can be redistributed across multiple parallel routes on both coasts. That said, the geographic clustering of landing infrastructure — particularly the concentration in New Jersey — means physical disruption to a small stretch of coastline could affect multiple systems simultaneously. Diversity of cable routes does not automatically equal diversity of landing geography.