Hoxa, United Kingdom

How the Internet Reaches Hoxa

Hoxa is a settlement on South Ronaldsay, one of the Orkney Islands, an archipelago lying off the northern tip of the Scottish mainland in the United Kingdom. Its position places it well beyond the heavily cabled coastlines of southern England, in a remote northern island environment where connectivity depends entirely on a single dedicated submarine link rather than any of the major international cable corridors.

International internet traffic reaching Hoxa does not arrive directly from overseas. Instead, the R100 North cable connects Hoxa to other points within the United Kingdom, meaning traffic from the wider global internet travels to the UK through separate international cables before being routed onward across R100 North to reach this Orkney terminus.

The Cable Serving Hoxa

The R100 North cable is a 224 km domestic submarine system with a ready-for-service date of 2023, currently at draft status. It connects Hoxa to six other landing points, all within the United Kingdom: Baile Mòr (Isle of Colonsay), Bay of London, Belmont (Unst, Shetland), Burravoe (Yell, Shetland), Crockness (Orkney), and a further UK point. The cable forms a domestic ring linking multiple Scottish island communities — Orkney and Shetland prominently among them — to the broader UK terrestrial and submarine network.

Regional Context

The United Kingdom hosts 42 submarine cables across 105 landing points, making it one of the most densely cabled nations in the world. The average cable length landing in the UK is 1,451 km, reflecting its role as a major terminus for long-haul transatlantic and European routes. Hoxa stands in stark contrast to the country's primary cable hubs: Bude in Cornwall serves 7 cables, while Blackpool, Southport, Holyhead, and Lowestoft each handle two or three international and domestic connections. Hoxa is served by a single, entirely domestic cable, placing it at the furthest edge of the UK's submarine infrastructure.

What This Means for Connectivity

All international traffic arriving at or departing from Hoxa flows through the R100 North cable. An outage on this cable would sever the community's submarine connectivity entirely, leaving it dependent on any available terrestrial or wireless alternatives. Because R100 North is a domestic inter-island system, its purpose is to bridge remote Scottish island communities — Orkney and Shetland — into the national network rather than to provide direct international routing. Destinations reachable through the cable are other UK landing points; access to the rest of the world is then onward-routed through the UK's much larger international cable estate.

Hoxa's position as a single-cable, domestically oriented terminus illustrates how submarine cable infrastructure in an island nation like the United Kingdom serves not only global connectivity but also the internal challenge of reaching geographically isolated communities across open water.