According to CNBC, Amazon is building its first wholly-owned subsea fiber-optic cable called Fastnet, connecting Maryland’s Eastern shore directly to County Cork, Ireland. The cable will have a massive capacity exceeding 320 terabits per second, which Amazon says is equivalent to streaming 12.5 million HD movies simultaneously. Unlike Amazon’s previous investments in cables like Jako, Bifrost, and Havfrue, which were done as part of consortiums, Fastnet is entirely Amazon’s project. Matt Rehder, Amazon Web Services VP of core networking, emphasized that subsea cables are essential for AWS and international connectivity, noting satellites have higher latency and costs. The company expects Fastnet to be operational by 2028, though it didn’t disclose the construction cost.
<h2 id="cloud-giants-ocean-race”>The cloud giants’ ocean race
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about adding more bandwidth. It’s about control. When you own the cable, you control the route, the capacity, the maintenance schedule—everything. For a company like Amazon, whose AWS division basically runs a huge chunk of the internet, that’s priceless. They’re not just buying a seat on the bus anymore; they’re building the bus.
And they’re not alone in this underwater land grab. Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all been snapping up subsea real estate too. It’s becoming a core part of the cloud infrastructure arms race. Think about it—if you’re selling cloud services to global companies, the speed and reliability of data moving between continents becomes a direct competitive advantage. Can your AI model train faster if the data pipes are fatter and more direct? Absolutely.
Why now? Blame AI
So why is Amazon going solo now? The demand drivers have fundamentally shifted. We’re talking about cloud computing, yes, but specifically the insane data appetites of artificial intelligence and edge applications. AI doesn’t just need compute power; it needs to move colossal datasets around the planet quickly and reliably. Satellite? Forget it. The latency would kill most AI workflows.
Matt Rehder basically said it outright: satellite has higher latency and costs, and you just can’t get enough capacity. For the AI-driven future Amazon is betting on, that’s a non-starter. They need the biggest, fastest, most reliable pipes they can get their hands on. And apparently, sharing those pipes in a consortium isn’t cutting it anymore for their specific needs.
Resilience is the new battleground
Let’s not overlook the resilience angle. When you own the cable, you’re not just buying capacity—you’re buying insurance. A single cable cut in a consortium-owned line can cause chaos for multiple companies. But when it’s your cable? You prioritize your own traffic during repairs. You design the redundancy exactly how you want it. For AWS customers running mission-critical applications, that kind of guaranteed uptime is worth its weight in gold.
By 2028, when Fastnet goes live, the data landscape will look completely different. I’d bet we’ll see every major cloud provider with multiple wholly-owned cables by then. This is just the opening move in the next phase of the internet’s physical infrastructure war. The ocean floor is becoming the new cloud frontier.
