AWS says it is developing Fastnet, a subsea cable buried ~1.5m deep and with a capacity over 320Tbps, aiming to debut in 2028 to connect Maryland and Ireland
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will lay a new subsea cable across the ocean floor, connecting Maryland and Ireland.
Context & Ripple Effects
Fastnet extends a pattern in which large technology buyers finance or co-finance long-haul connectivity rather than rely solely on carrier-provided capacity. AWS previously joined the Jupiter cable consortium, while Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius completed the 160Tbps Marea transatlantic cable.
The proposed Maryland-Ireland route places AWS directly in the transatlantic infrastructure layer, with a stated capacity materially above the earlier Marea benchmark and a defined 2028 target.
First-order effects
- AWS takes on a direct, long-duration network-infrastructure project between Maryland and Ireland, giving it a planned high-capacity route under its own development control.
- Cable-system vendors, marine contractors and the route’s landing ecosystems gain a prospective project, though capacity will not be available until the stated target date.
Second-order effects
- Other hyperscalers and large network buyers will have a new benchmark for dedicated transatlantic capacity and route control when assessing their own connectivity arrangements.
- A new AWS-developed route could strengthen its ability to manage traffic between its Maryland and Ireland operations, increasing pressure on network providers to compete on capacity, resiliency and commercial terms.
Third-order effects
- If buyer-funded cables continue to proliferate, control of strategic intercontinental capacity shifts further from traditional telecom carriers toward cloud platforms and major internet companies.
- The pattern makes subsea connectivity a more integral part of cloud-service differentiation: infrastructure commitments increasingly span compute, data centers and the network links between regions.
The trend: Fastnet is part of a buyer-led infrastructure buildout in which cloud platforms treat long-haul network capacity as a strategic layer of their service stack.