AI does not float: 343,486 km of cables under the sea

AI is debated in quarterly results, but it rests on physical infrastructure: ships laying fibre, cable factories and landing stations. The map brings together 24 trunk cables; 23 are in service and one, the Pan-Arctic, is still planned.

What 343,486 km says

The 23 cables in service add up to 343,486 km. The median is 14,530 km and 11 are longer than 15,000 km. The longest is 2Africa (45,000 km, 2024); the shortest, EllaLink (5,900 km between Portugal and Brazil).

Concentration is the first finding. The United States appears in 12 of the 23 cables (52%) and accounts for 151,256 km, 44% of the total. France appears in 8 (35%) and accounts for 149,400 km (43.5%). Portugal (6), South Africa (5), Nigeria (5), Egypt (4), Senegal (4), the United Kingdom (4), Singapore (4), Angola (4) and Brazil (4) complete the group.

Egypt deserves a separate line. Four cables pass through the country —2Africa, AAE-1, EIG and SEA-ME-WE 6— and add up to 104,000 km, 30.3% of the total. It is the corridor linking Europe with Asia and Africa through the Red Sea and Suez. The map does not measure traffic, but it shows why an incident there affects half the internet.

Ten of the 23 cables entered service since 2020 and five in 2022. The network behind the cloud is not a 1990s legacy: much of it has been built in the last decade.

Orders have not stopped

LS Cable & System ended the third quarter with a consolidated backlog of 9.8522 trillion won, 20.2% more than at the end of 2025, according to Financial News. LSCUS has 676.5 billion won in orders and LS Marine Solution, the subsea cable division, lifted its backlog by 42% year on year to 201.6 billion won.

The PISCES cable, backed by Orange, Equitix and MDM, will connect Galway (Ireland) with Sopelana (Spain), Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez (France) and Carcavelos (Portugal). It will run for about 3,125 km with 16 fibre pairs, avoid routing through the United Kingdom and is due to be installed in 2028. The budget is about €130.4 million, with €48.4 million from the European Union, according to Submarine Networks. The map does not include it because it is a sample of cables in service and PISCES is not one yet.

Energy sets the pace

More fibre is not enough. The Guardian reported on 7 November that the data-centre boom in south-east Asia has stalled over power and water. Thailand paused 49 projects and 117 approvals in September. In Johor (Malaysia), operational capacity rose from 94 MW in 2023 to 1,110 MW in 2026; data centres already use 24% of the state's electricity and could reach 40% by 2035, according to Wood Mackenzie. Last week, the Nasdaq fell 3.37% and the S&P 500 2.68%. Infrastructure does not move at the pace of a trading session: the question is whether power and permits will arrive as fast as the cables.

Method and data

The calculation uses the published GeoJSON of the map, consulted on 9 November 2026. It contains 24 features: 23 cables with a length and the Pan-Arctic, still planned and without a length, which is excluded. Total length is the sum of the 'Longitud del cable (km)' field; the median is 14,530 km. Country counts count the cables whose 'Países' field includes that country; a cable can count in several, which is why the percentages do not add up to 100. n = 23. This is a sample of trunk routes, not a census, and it does not include projects that are not yet in service, such as PISCES. The order and data-centre figures come from the sources cited; the analysis does not establish causality.