Antarctica: The Last Continent Without a Submarine Cable — Where Scientists Schedule Their Internet by the Hour

The Continent That Schedules Its Internet

At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, accessing the internet requires more than just opening a browser — it starts with checking the satellite schedule.

The station depends on NASA's TDRS satellites, which orbit high enough to appear above the Antarctic horizon for only a few hours each day. During these windows, the entire station — hosting up to 1,000 people during the austral summer — shares a single connection of approximately 17 Mbps. The schedule shifts by about four minutes daily due to the difference between sidereal and solar time.

Round-trip latency: 750 ms. Packet loss: 10%. Speed per person: approximately 40 kbps.

To put this in perspective, a single household in most developed countries enjoys faster internet than an entire Antarctic research base supporting a thousand people. Video calls are unreliable, cloud services often time out, and scientists must pre-schedule upload slots, competing for bandwidth with operational traffic and fellow researchers. Loading a modern webpage can take several minutes.

As of October 2023, connectivity at the South Pole was limited to a few hours per day, strictly during satellite visibility and authorized usage periods.

Seven Continents, Six Cables, One Exception

Every continent on Earth is interconnected by submarine fiber optic cables — except Antarctica.

The numbers illustrate the disparity:

Seventy research stations. Thirty countries. Zero submarine cables.

Why Not Just Lay One?

The Drake Passage — spanning 1,000 km from Chile to the Antarctic Peninsula — is the most logical route. It is also one of the most challenging marine environments on Earth.

Water temperature: below -2°C year-round, dropping to -58°C at the surface in winter. Currents: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the planet's strongest ocean current, moving 130 million cubic meters per second through the passage. Winds: sustained speeds exceeding 100 km/h. Icebergs: some as large as small countries, calving unpredictably from ice shelves and scraping the ocean floor at depths that could sever any cable.

Sailors often describe the Drake Passage as the roughest stretch of water on Earth. Cable engineers have labeled it even more bluntly: unbuildable.

However, the primary challenge is not engineering but economics. Antarctica has no permanent population, with its inhabitants fluctuating between roughly 1,000 in winter and 4,400 in summer. Justifying the cost of a submarine cable for a small, seasonal population of scientists has historically been nearly impossible.

The Satellite Workarounds

Antarctic research stations have adopted various satellite solutions, each with inherent limitations:

• McMurdo Station (US): 17 Mbps shared connection. By 2024, Starlink had emerged as the most reliable connectivity option on the continent following its initial trials in September 2022.

• Australian stations: 9 Mbps symmetric connection provided by Speedcast.

• Rothera (UK): Trialed Eutelsat OneWeb's LEO service in 2024, achieving speeds up to 120 Mbps — a significant improvement, though still satellite-based.

• Scott Base (NZ): Connected via C-Band through Spark NZ; began Starlink trials in April 2023.

• South Pole Station: TDRS relay offering up to 50 Mbps during satellite visibility windows.

Starlink's arrival in Antarctica in 2022 marked a milestone, with SpaceX confirming operations on all seven continents. Using inter-satellite laser links, Starlink extended coverage to polar regions. However, satellite internet remains weather-dependent, capacity-constrained, and no substitute for the reliability and bandwidth of fiber.

Chile's 1,850 km Gamble

In February 2025, Chile's Undersecretariat of Telecommunications initiated a feasibility study for what could become one of the most ambitious submarine cable projects ever attempted: a fiber link from Puerto Williams — the world's southernmost city — across the Drake Passage to King George Island in Antarctica.

This initiative builds on Chile's previous success with Fibra Óptica Austral, a 3,000 km cable completed in 2020 that extended fiber connectivity from Santiago to Puerto Williams, bringing fiber optics to the doorstep of Antarctica for the first time.

The feasibility study, conducted by Pioneer Consulting and Salience Consulting with funding from the Development Bank for Latin America (CAF), delivered its first executive report on March 5, 2026, just six days before Chile's presidential transition.

Key findings included:

• Minimum configuration: 1,850 submarine km linking Chile's permanent bases on King George Island and the Antarctic Peninsula.

• Extended configurations: Four expansion options to connect bases operated by 15 additional countries, including the US, China, Russia, Germany, and South Korea.

• Operational timeline: 2034 to 2058, spanning a 25-year horizon.

• SMART technology: The cable would double as a scientific sensor network, enabling seismic activity detection, ocean temperature monitoring, and real-time ocean floor data collection. Japan has invested over $1 billion over 15 years in similar SMART networks in the North Pacific.

This is a project measured not in quarters but in decades.

The Geopolitical Dimension

The Antarctic cable project exists within a complex geopolitical landscape. In the latter half of 2025, Chile approved the HMN-TS cable connecting Valparaíso to Hong Kong, utilizing Huawei Marine Networks technology. In February 2026, just weeks before Chile's government transition, the United States revoked visas for three Chilean officials involved in the decision.

This underscored the growing strategic importance of submarine cable routes in global geopolitics.

In contrast, the Antarctic cable project is explicitly multilateral, designed with geopolitical neutrality and free from Chinese technology. Nevertheless, it operates in a world where every new cable route is closely scrutinized for strategic implications.

What 750 Milliseconds Means for Science

For Antarctic researchers enduring months of isolation, the difference between satellite and fiber connectivity is transformative.

With satellite: data uploads are scheduled in batches, climate monitoring transmits in intervals, high-resolution imagery faces delays of weeks, and collaboration is limited to email rather than real-time interaction.

With fiber: continuous data streaming becomes possible, enabling real-time collaboration with global colleagues, on-site processing of satellite imagery, and the generation of continuous oceanographic and seismic data through SMART sensors embedded in the cable.

Until such a cable materializes — if it does — Antarctica remains the last digital frontier. It is a continent where loading a webpage is an achievement, video calls are a luxury, and internet access depends on the fleeting presence of satellites overhead.

Six continents are connected by submarine cables. The seventh is still waiting.