AWS Touts Diverse Landings for New Transpacific Sta’O’Nuk Cable
AWS is promoting geographic diversity for Sta’O’Nuk, a new transpacific subsea cable that will add 420 Tbps of capacity between the United States and Japan. The system will use new landing points in Washington state and Japan to reduce the risk of a single event disrupting multiple cables. AWS expects the cable to be operational in 2029, noting that subsea development timelines have stretched to five to seven years due to permitting complexity.
Sta’O’Nuk is planned to connect the U.S. and Japan with 420 Tbps over 20 fiber pairs, entering service in 2029. Its landings at Hogan’s Corner, Washington, and a separate Japanese site are intended to avoid established hubs such as California, Oregon, Chiba Peninsula, and Shima, lowering the chance that one incident affects several cables.
AWS cites the 2024 Ivory Coast and Red Sea cable damage as evidence for diversity; Cape Town users reportedly kept cloud access during that event. The cable is also meant to join AWS’s global network and allow future alternate connections. Permitting complexity has stretched subsea projects to five to seven years.
The cable could affect businesses, cloud users, and AI developers across the U.S. and Japan by making international connectivity more resilient and potentially supporting lower-latency services. If diverse routes reduce outage risk, communities and firms relying on cloud platforms may experience fewer disruptions. However, longer permitting timelines may delay benefits, and capacity gains could concentrate advantages among providers able to build such infrastructure.