Amazon seems to be on an investment spree lately. Shortly after penning down a deal to help build the U.S.’s first modular nuclear power reactor, the company is expanding the reach of its worldwide network, in the literal sense. The company has pulled the curtain back on Fastnet, a new intercontinental cable wiring Maryland, U.S., to County Cork, Ireland. The new fiber cable has a capacity of at least 320 Tb/s, or, as Amazon puts it, enough to transfer 12.5 million HD films per second.

The cable should be operational in 2028, though its main task appears to be to act as a backup and load-balancing route. The extra capacity will be welcome for services that rely on AWS wares like CloudFront, Global Accelerator, and presumably, good ol’ S3. Future plans include adding another 10 Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions to its growing portfolio of connectivity and data centers.

Amazon remarks that its real-time traffic monitoring system as “complete visibility into every link” in its global network and implements “millions of daily optimizations” so that traffic can always follow the best possible path. Right until its automated DNS orchestration brings everything down anyway, at least. Additionally, Amazon notes that Fastnet was “designed with two strategic landing points that deliver critical route diversity away from traditional cable corridors”, probably meaning not wired to the UK or France as most other cross-Atlantic cables.

Quite interestingly, the shore-side sections of the cable are literally armored with two layers of protective steel wire, a wise decision in this day and age. It was not too long ago that some cables were cut in the Red Sea under questionable circumstances. Undersea cables are particularly critical and vulnerable infrastructure, as evidenced by the recent cut and Taiwan’s recent sea patrols against telecom shenanigans. Geopolitics, unfortunately, play a part in connection locations, seeing as Vodafone recently chose to wire Europe and Asia with a route that bypasses Russia.

Amazon is creating Community Benefit Funds for Maryland’s Eastern Shore and County Cork. The company says it’ll work directly with stakeholders to fund local initiatives, including “sustainability and environmental programs, health and well-being services, Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education, future workforce development, economic development and leadership training, inclusion and diversity initiatives, and programs addressing homelessness and hunger.”

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