Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station

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

Microsoft and Facebook partnering with Telxius landed their 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.

Google lands its private Dunant cable at Telxius' Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station. Google maintains control of the Dunant cable system in U.S. territory and international waters. The Dunant cable lands at Orange's La Parée Préneau cable landing station in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France. Google contracts with Orange to be the landing party in France. A landing party agreement governs the relationship between Google France and Orange.  Google France conveys to Orange ownership of the portion of the Dunant cable system that extends 12 nautical miles from the shores of France. Orange grants Google France an IRU for the same portion of the Dunant cable system. Further, Orange receives an IRU for two fiber pairs for the entire length of the Dunant cable system. 

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. 

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

Why does Virginia Beach become 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. 

The third is that 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.

Although New York, New Jersey and Miami are hosting most of the Atlantic cable systems. Virginia is hotter now for cable landing in the East Coast of the US.