Amazon’s Fastnet Cable Offers Unprecedented Bandwidth for HD Streaming

Published: 05 Nov 2025

Author: Precedence Research

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The leading tech giant Amazon is working to build its first wholly owned subsea cable project by building a fiber-optic cable known as the “Fastnet”, aiming to connect Maryland’s eastern shore to County Cork and Ireland. Subsea fiber-optic cables are a significant aspect of communication systems, as they carry nearly 95% of international data and voice traffic worldwide. These cables can carry hundreds of terabits of data per second, highlighting their speed and data-carrying capability. These data include government communication, financial transactions, different emails, video/audio calls, and streaming. 

In the past, Amazon has invested in several subsea cable projects, such as Jako, Bifrost, and Havfrue, as part of a consortium to strengthen its global roots. However, Fastnet is one of those projects that a company must handle solely.

To address this, Mr. Matt Rehder, a vice president of core networking at Amazon Web Services, mentioned, “Subsea is really essential for AWS and for any connectivity internationally across oceans. Without the subsea, you’d have to rely on satellite connectivity, which can work. But satellite has higher latency, higher costs, and you can’t get enough capacity or throughput to what our customers and the internet in general need.”

Amazon claims that Fastnet's capacity will exceed 320 terabits per second. This capacity is equivalent to streaming 12.5 million HD movies simultaneously without data lag. The company is building this project to meet the increasing demand for higher internet connectivity across sectors such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and edge applications that use Amazon Web Services. 

Fastnet is an ambitious project by Amazon Web Services that will strengthen its global networking and resilience. However, the company hasn't yet disclosed its construction details or the costs it will incur to leverage fasten after its launch and commercialization. But they reveal only that it will be functional by 2028. Moreover, recognizing the potential of subsea cable technology and its significant demand, many tech giants, including Meta, Google, and Microsoft, are entering the race to develop subsea cable infrastructure by heavily investing in the projects, according to sources.