Westness, United Kingdom

How the Internet Reaches Westness

Westness is a settlement in the United Kingdom, located in the Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. As an island community, it sits at a considerable geographic remove from the major population and connectivity centres of mainland Britain. International and national internet traffic reaches Westness through a single submarine cable that connects it to other points within the United Kingdom, rather than linking it directly to foreign shores.

The R100 North cable, which entered service in 2023, is the sole submarine cable landing at Westness. All of its landing points are within the United Kingdom, meaning the cable functions as a domestic inter-island and coastal route rather than an international link. International traffic arriving at Westness therefore travels onward through the broader UK terrestrial and submarine network before reaching the wider global internet.

The Cable Serving Westness

The R100 North cable spans 224 km and reached ready-for-service status in 2023. It connects Westness to six other UK landing points: Baile Mòr, Bay of London, Belmont, Burravoe, Crockness, and one additional unnamed UK point. These destinations span island and coastal communities, indicating the cable was designed to extend broadband connectivity to remote and island locations across northern Scotland and surrounding waters — consistent with the Scottish Government's R100 programme aimed at connecting rural areas. The cable carries no foreign landings; it is a wholly domestic UK infrastructure asset.

Regional Context

The United Kingdom hosts 42 submarine cables landing across 105 landing points, with an average cable length of 1,451 km and the country's first cable in service since 1990. Westness represents one of the smaller and more remote terminuses within this network, served by a single short domestic cable. By contrast, regional peers such as Bude in Cornwall hosts 7 cables — including major transatlantic routes — while Blackpool and Southport each land 3 cables. Westness sits at the opposite end of this spectrum, connected by one recently built domestic link.

What This Means for Connectivity

With only the R100 North cable serving Westness, all submarine-carried internet traffic to and from the location flows through this single route. An outage on the cable would sever the community's submarine link entirely, leaving it dependent on any available terrestrial or wireless alternatives. The traffic carried is exclusively inter-UK in nature — reaching other island communities and coastal points rather than connecting directly to continental Europe or beyond.

Understanding Westness as a single-cable, domestic-only terminus highlights an important dimension of UK internet geography: while the country as a whole is one of the most heavily connected in the world, its remote island communities rely on dedicated short-haul infrastructure to participate in that network. The R100 North cable represents a deliberate extension of connectivity into areas that the broader international cable network does not directly serve.