Totness, Suriname

Totness, Suriname: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Totness is a town on the northern coast of Suriname, serving as the capital of the Coronie district and the oldest settlement in that district. Despite its modest size, Totness functions as one of two submarine cable landing points in Suriname, alongside the capital Paramaribo. Its coastal position on the northeastern shoulder of South America makes it a logical terminus for regional submarine cable connections reaching across the southern Caribbean.

One submarine cable lands at Totness: the Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS). This system links Suriname to its neighboring states of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, establishing a regional corridor that spans the Guianas coast and connects into the broader Caribbean network. The SG-SCS is the first submarine cable to reach Suriname, with a ready-for-service date of 2010, marking the beginning of the country's direct submarine cable connectivity.

Cables Landing at Totness

The Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS) is a 1,249-kilometre submarine cable system that reached its ready-for-service status in 2010, listed with draft status. In addition to Totness, Suriname, the cable connects to landing points in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. It forms a coastal regional link along the northeastern rim of South America, tying together three adjacent territories through a single cable infrastructure spanning the Guiana coastline and extending into the southern Caribbean toward Trinidad and Tobago.

Regional Context

Suriname hosts two submarine cable landing points: Totness and Paramaribo, the national capital. Each landing point is served by one cable, making them equal in scale within Suriname's submarine cable geography. Totness, as the Coronie district capital, thus contributes half of the country's total submarine cable capacity alongside the far larger city of Paramaribo.

Network Role

Totness operates as a single-cable terminus, serving as the Suriname endpoint of the SG-SCS regional system. The cable it hosts enables direct submarine connectivity between Suriname, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, forming a sub-regional triangle of connectivity along the northeastern coast of South America and into the southern Caribbean. This positions Totness as a gateway for traffic flowing between Suriname and two of its closest neighbors along this corridor.

Within Suriname's overall submarine cable graph, Totness and Paramaribo together give the country two geographically distributed landing points, each anchored by its own cable. The presence of a landing point in Totness, rather than a concentration of all cables at the capital, distributes Suriname's submarine cable infrastructure across the Coronie and Paramaribo coastal zones, adding geographic separation to the country's international cable access.