The rise of artificial intelligence is changing the physical environment in North Carolina and across the South. Companies are building data centers all over the region.
AI-driven applications are creating demand for more conduits to carry internet traffic, like undersea cables that snake along the ocean floor.
For decades, most of these cables were clustered in the northeastern U.S., but companies like Google and Meta are looking for new connection points along the East Coast.
DC BLOX, a data infrastructure provider, opened a cable landing site in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 2023. To the north, a landing station in Virginia Beach carries data from servers in Ashburn, Virginia. The Washington D.C. suburb, with over 130 facilities, is known as “Data Center Alley.”
“Cables do break from time to time,” said Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography. “Having them spread out into more unique locations creates more diversity, which is a higher resiliency for the network.”
Mauldin estimates it costs around $300 million to lay a new cable end-to-end. “Which is, you know, it's not nothing,” he said. “But compared to the cost of a data center and all the investment we're seeing in chips and power globally, the cost of cables is a pretty small amount.”
While cables are coming ashore in neighboring states, don’t expect to see them slinking along North Carolina beaches anytime soon. Much of the state’s coastline, including the Outer Banks, has protected status that limits development. The sea floor is also not ideal for cable construction. “This is a 12.5% grade and is one of eastern North America’s steepest continental slopes,” according to NC Coastwatch.
Subsea cables also come with security concerns. The FCC recently adopted new rules to limit foreign companies from laying cables U.S. waters. The rules package also streamlines the permitting process for cable construction.
DC BLOX recently announced plans to expand its Myrtle Beach landing station to accommodate five more cables, while LS GreenLink wants to build a cable construction plant in Chesapeake, Virginia.
