Atlantic Crossing-1 (AC-1)

Overview

Atlantic Crossing-1 (AC-1) is a transatlantic submarine cable system spanning 14,301 kilometres. It connects four landing points across Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, providing a direct link between Western Europe and the eastern seaboard of North America. The cable is owned by Colt, a provider of network and communications services with a strong presence across European enterprise markets.

Route and Landings

In Germany, AC-1 lands at Sylt. In the Netherlands, the cable comes ashore at Beverwijk. The United Kingdom landing is located at Whitesands Bay. On the western side of the Atlantic, the cable lands at Brookhaven, NY, in the United States.

Ownership and Operators

AC-1 is owned solely by Colt. Colt provides network infrastructure and managed services to businesses and wholesale carriers primarily across Europe and Asia, making the ownership of a transatlantic cable a complement to its broader network reach.

Status and Timeline

AC-1 was declared ready for service in 1998, placing it among the generation of transatlantic cables deployed during the late 1990s expansion of undersea capacity between Europe and North America.

Regional Context

AC-1 operates in one of the most heavily served transoceanic corridors in the world, linking European and North American networks across the North Atlantic. Within this corridor, it sits alongside cables of considerably greater length, including Project Waterworth at 50,000 kilometres and 2Africa at 45,000 kilometres, as well as other systems such as GlobeNet (23,500 km, RFS 2000) and South America-1 (25,000 km, RFS 2001) that were deployed around a similar period. AC-1's 14,301-kilometre span reflects its focused point-to-point design across the North Atlantic rather than a broader multi-region architecture.

Measured performance over the past 60 days, based on 123 ping tests, shows an average round-trip latency of 89.8 milliseconds, with a best recorded result of 12.2 milliseconds.

Strategic Role

By connecting Brookhaven on the US East Coast with three distinct European landing points — in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom — AC-1 provides connectivity across a corridor that links some of Europe's most active internet exchange and data centre markets with North American networks. The distribution of landings across three separate countries offers geographic spread along the European side of the route.