St. Martins, NB, Canada

How the Internet Reaches St. Martins, NB, Canada

St. Martins is a small coastal community in New Brunswick, situated along the Bay of Fundy on Canada's Atlantic seaboard. Its position on the eastern Canadian coast places it within reach of submarine cable infrastructure that connects the broader Maritime provinces. International and inter-regional internet traffic arrives at St. Martins through a single submarine cable landing directly at this point, making it a terminus rather than a node along a multi-cable corridor.

The APOCS 2 cable is the sole submarine cable serving St. Martins, linking it directly into a network that spans several landing points across Atlantic Canada. All international traffic flowing in and out of St. Martins passes through this one connection, meaning the community's external internet access depends entirely on this single cable and whatever onward routing its connected landing points provide.

The Cable Serving St. Martins, NB, Canada

The APOCS 2 cable, which entered service in 1995, connects St. Martins to three other Canadian landing points: Aylesford, NS, Dingwall, NS, and Codroy, NL. This configuration makes APOCS 2 an entirely domestic cable, linking New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador in a regional network across the waters of Atlantic Canada rather than extending to international destinations. The cable provides a subsea route connecting these four Maritime and Atlantic communities, enabling inter-provincial traffic to travel underwater rather than overland.

Regional Context

Canada hosts 18 submarine cables across 44 landing points, with an average cable length of 877 km and the country's first cable in service since 1991. St. Martins represents one of the smaller, single-cable terminuses within that national picture. Nearby regional peers include Halifax, NS, which lands two cables and serves as a more substantial hub for Atlantic Canada's submarine cable connectivity. Other Canadian landing points such as Kangiqsujuaq, QC and Puvirnituq, QC also land two cables each, reflecting the pattern across Canada where certain points carry heavier infrastructure while others, like St. Martins, serve more localised roles.

What This Means for Connectivity

Because St. Martins is served by a single submarine cable, all of its cable-based external traffic flows through APOCS 2. An outage on this cable would sever the community's subsea link to the rest of Atlantic Canada's cable network. The destinations reachable via APOCS 2 are domestic — Aylesford, Dingwall, and Codroy — meaning the cable supports inter-provincial connectivity across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador rather than providing a direct route to international markets.

Understanding St. Martins' single-cable, domestically oriented terminus helps illustrate how Canada's submarine cable network is not limited to transoceanic links — a significant portion of the country's 44 landing points serve regional and inter-provincial traffic, knitting together the coastal communities of Atlantic Canada through underwater infrastructure.