Salinas, Ecuador

Salinas, Ecuador: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Salinas is a coastal city in the Province of Santa Elena, Ecuador, situated at the westernmost point of mainland Ecuador along the Pacific coast. Its position on the open Pacific makes it a natural terminus for transoceanic submarine cable infrastructure. One submarine cable lands at Salinas, connecting Ecuador into a regional network that spans the western coast of South America and extends northward toward Central America.

The single cable serving Salinas is the South Pacific Cable System (SPCS)/Mistral, which links Ecuador with Chile, Peru, and Guatemala. This system enables connectivity along the Pacific corridor of South America and into Central America, supporting both regional inter-country communications and broader intercontinental routing across the eastern Pacific rim.

Cables Landing at Salinas

The South Pacific Cable System (SPCS)/Mistral is a 7,300-kilometre submarine cable system that entered service in 2021. In addition to Salinas, Ecuador, the cable lands in Chile, Peru, and Guatemala. Its route connects multiple countries along the Pacific coast of South America and Central America, forming a continuous Pacific-facing corridor from the south of the continent northward toward Guatemala. With a ready-for-service date of 2021, it is among the more recently commissioned cable systems serving the region.

Regional Context

Within Ecuador, submarine cable infrastructure is distributed across three landing points. Punta Carnero hosts two cables, making it the most connected landing point in the country, while both Salinas and Ancon each host a single cable. Salinas therefore shares the lower tier of Ecuador's landing point hierarchy by cable count, though its position at the country's westernmost point gives it a distinct geographic footprint on the Pacific coast.

Network Role

Salinas functions as a single-cable terminus within Ecuador's submarine cable network, serving as the national anchor point for the South Pacific Cable System (SPCS)/Mistral. Through this cable, Salinas provides a direct Pacific coastal link connecting Ecuador to Peru and Chile to the south and to Guatemala to the north, enabling routing across multiple national borders along one of the most geographically coherent submarine cable corridors in the western hemisphere.

As a single-cable landing point, Salinas does not operate as a multi-cable hub in the way that Punta Carnero does within Ecuador. Nevertheless, its role as the sole Ecuadorian terminus for a 7,300-kilometre transnational system means it contributes a distinct node to the regional submarine cable graph, extending Ecuador's Pacific connectivity toward Central America through a route not duplicated at any other Ecuadorian landing point.