JULY 2025
The Strategic Future
of Subsea Cables
Ireland Case Study
By Romina Bandura and Thomas Bryja
Introduction
Ireland’s unique strategic position—linking transnational telecommunications cables between the
United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe—makes it a key player in safeguarding
subsea ber-optic cables. In 1858, the rst transatlantic telegraph cable was laid from Kerry, Ireland,
to Newfoundland, Canada, marking the beginning of a revolution in global communication. Today,
approximately three-quarters of subsea cables in the Northern Hemisphere pass near or through Irish
waters, making it a critical nexus for international connectivity (see Figure 1). Worldwide, these cables
are essential not only for everyday internet and communication but also for nancial transactions,
processing around $10 trillion daily. As technoloy develops, submarine ber-optic cables will only
prove more critical as the demand for services reliant on them grows.
Despite concerns about enery consumption and grid capacity, Ireland—particularly Dublin—is already
a global hub for data centers, attracting major tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon with
its pro-business environment, skilled workforce, and access to the EU single market. The need for data
centers will continue to accelerate in the wake of the articial intelligence (AI) revolution, as training
large language models takes enormous, distributed storage to compute; if those networks are globally
oriented, they will require additional subsea capacity to connect them. Older cables will need to be
replaced as well, as cable lifespans range from 17 to 25 years. In addition, Ireland hosts the European
headquarters of major U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs), which rely on its enery and subsea
cable infrastructure, underscoring the need to protect and ensure redundancy for these systems.
At the same time, geopolitical tensions have risen worldwide, and Ireland’s long historical attachment
to neutrality has been prodded in recent years. A May 2021 ransomware attack on Ireland’s health
services and Russian military exercises o the Irish coast in 2022 prompted Dublin to recognize in
