Union Island, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Union Island, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Union Island is a small island of approximately 9 square kilometres situated in the southern Grenadines, part of the nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It lies close to the border with Grenada, with the island of Carriacou and the Grenadian mainland visible to the south. As a landing point, Union Island connects to the regional submarine cable network, with one submarine cable currently landing on the island.

The single cable serving Union Island is the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program (CARCIP), a regional system that links islands within and between Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada. Its proximity to Grenada makes Union Island a natural southern node in this inter-island corridor, serving connectivity between the two neighbouring Caribbean nations.

Cables Landing at Union Island, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

The Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program (CARCIP) is a submarine cable system with a total length of 225 kilometres, which reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2019, with a draft designation. The cable connects landing points in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada, forming a short inter-island link between these two closely situated Eastern Caribbean nations. Union Island, positioned at the southern tip of the Vincentian Grenadines, serves as one of the cable's landing points, extending the system's reach to this outlying island community.

Regional Context

Within Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Union Island is one of several island landing points, alongside Bequia, Canouan, Chateaubelair, Mustique, and Owia, each of which also hosts a single submarine cable. The main hub of submarine cable activity in the country is Kingstown, which serves as the landing point for three cables. Union Island therefore shares its single-cable status with the majority of the country's outer-island landing points, reflecting a distributed approach to connectivity across the Grenadines archipelago.

Network Role

Union Island functions as a single-cable terminus within the regional submarine cable graph, connected exclusively through the CARCIP system to other landing points in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in Grenada. This positions the island within a regional inter-island corridor rather than any intercontinental route. The cable enables a direct submarine link between the southern Grenadines and the neighbouring nation of Grenada, a connection facilitated by Union Island's geographic position close to the Grenadian island chain.

As a terminus on a regionally focused cable, Union Island represents the southernmost extension of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines' submarine cable infrastructure, illustrating how small-island nations in the Eastern Caribbean use relatively short regional systems to knit together geographically dispersed communities into a shared connectivity network.