Digital Realty is planning to build a cable landing station (CLS) inside its LAX12 data center in El Segundo, Calif., adding a new on-ramp for subsea capacity into the Los Angeles metro area. The company announced the project on Sept. 22 in partnership with Assured Communications, a specialist in subsea infrastructure design and delivery.
The CLS is aimed at routes between Asia-Pacific and North America and is expected to begin supporting cables in 2028.. A cable landing station is where a subsea cable terminates on land and connects to terrestrial networks. Increasingly, hyperscale cloud and AI providers are bringing cables directly to specific data centers rather than terminating them at standalone landing stations.
Assured is also a strategic partner to the landing operator for AWS’s Sta’O’Nuk cable.. “Digital Realty sees cable landing infrastructure as an increasingly important part of the broader connectivity ecosystem,” said Craig Waldrop, vice president of strategy and business development at Digital Realty, in an interview with Data Center Knowledge.
“Subsea cables provide international capacity, but that capacity is most valuable when it can connect efficiently into the data centers, networks, cloud providers, and customers that need it.”. Related:AWS Wires a New US AI Route Across the Pacific. Inside LAX12: Digital Realty’s First Turnkey Cable Landing Station.
The planned CLS is designed to provide subsea cable operators with a turnkey solution for landing and powering their systems. Assured is supporting the design, engineering, and construction, drawing on its experience with subsea cable systems and landing infrastructure. The project is currently in development..
The station is a new type of project for Digital Realty. “LAX12 represents Digital Realty’s first turnkey cable landing solution and marks an important evolution in the company’s broader interconnection platform,” Waldrop said.. The approach is intended to pull landing infrastructure and surrounding networks into a single location.
“That simplifies the path from subsea infrastructure into terrestrial networks, while creating increased flexibility for cable owners in how they distribute capacity once it reaches the US,” he said.. Why Put the Landing Station Inside the Data Center?. The goal is to bring subsea capacity closer to the networks and clouds that consume it..
“By bringing the landing point directly into an established interconnection environment, rather than treating the cable landing station as a standalone piece of infrastructure, the project creates a more direct bridge between subsea capacity arriving from Asia-Pacific and the broader digital ecosystem in Los Angeles,” Waldrop said.. He noted that in El Segundo specifically, the proximity of the beach landing to Digital Realty’s existing infrastructure provides a more direct path from subsea systems into terrestrial networks.
The connection will run through Digital Realty’s carrier-neutral model.. “The value of a carrier-neutral model is that it gives cable operators a common landing environment that is not tied to a single network or cloud provider,” Waldrop said.. What’s Fueling Investment in Subsea Connectivity?.
AI is a major driver of bandwidth demand, but not the only one.. “AI is contributing to demand for high-capacity and resilient connectivity, but this extends beyond any single workload,” Waldrop said. “As traffic patterns evolve and infrastructure requirements grow, Digital Realty sees subsea infrastructure as an important part of the underlying infrastructure customers need to connect globally.”.
He added that demand for efficient, resilient connectivity continues to drive investment in greater capacity and route diversity. “While AI certainly contributes to that demand, it’s one of several factors shaping investment decisions,” he said. “Cloud adoption, content delivery, network expansion, and broader digital infrastructure growth are all driving continued investment in subsea connectivity.”
