Virginia Beach is now a hot site for submarine cable landing, hosting MAREA, BRUSA, SAEx1 and Dunant submarine cable systems.

Microsoft and Facebook partner with Telxius to land its 160Tbps MAREA cable system at the Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station (CLS) site at 1900 Corporate Landing Parkway in Virginia Beach.

Telxius also lands its private cable BRUSA at the Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station (CLS) site at 1900 Corporate Landing Parkway in Virginia Beach.

ACA International LLC, the landing party in the US for the South Atlantc Express (SAEx1) bought 10 acres in Corporate Landing Business Park to build a cable landing station and data center there. 

Google announced to land its second private and non-telecom Dunant submarine cable system at Virginia Beach.

Seaborn Networks plans to extend its Seabras-1 cable system with a branch to Virginia Beach.

Why Virginia Beach becomes hot for submarine cable landing?

The main reason is a more diverse route across the Atlantic and a direct interconnection between Europe and the Ashburn/Dulles datacenter hub. The city has established two diverse terrestrial landing routes: Camp Pendleton, this route is complete and was built for Telxius’ MAREA and BRUSA cables, the second, Sandbridge, which is on the drawing board ready for future needs.

The second is the favourable taxation policies. In December of 2017, Virginia Beach slashed its tax rate on computers and data center equipment to $0.40 per $100 of assessed value, currently the most competitive equipment tax breaks in the U.S. 

Although NYC is still hosting most of the Atlantic cable systems. Virginia is hotter now, as Virginia State is the home of one of the US’s large Internet hub, Ashburn, Virginia. More than 16 large datacenters and more than 60 smaller datacenters in the state.