Landing stations and international submarine fiber systems are telecom infrastructure operated by telecom enterprises licensed to establish networks and provide services under Telecommunications Law No. 24/2023/QH15. A data center is not the licensed subject for this infrastructure; its role is that of a capacity buyer: leasing international private circuits, purchasing indefeasible rights of use from carriers, or buying transmission services from several carriers to build redundancy. Every international connectivity promise a data center sells to end customers must anchor on these upstream capacity contracts.
Data centers do not operate submarine cables: they buy capacity from licensed carriers
A proper international capacity contract settles six points carrier templates usually skip: the concrete physical route and a commitment not to collapse both redundant circuits onto the same submarine system; availability and restoration times per route; automatic or manual failover mechanics and who decides at night; the handover point and responsibility for the domestic leg from landing station to the data center; whether a cable cut counts as force majeure or triggers a duty to maintain capacity over an alternate route; and the data center’s right to real-time incident notice so it can proactively inform its own customers.
What an international capacity contract must settle
Submarine cable cuts are a recurring regional event, not a rare exception, so redundancy promises must be verified by actual route structure: two different carriers are not enough if both buy capacity on the same cable system; true redundancy needs diversity at three layers — carrier, submarine cable system and landing station — plus physically separate domestic routes. The data center should require carriers to declare the underlying cable system for each circuit in a contract annex, updated when the carrier re-routes, because silent re-routing is how redundancy promises quietly become hollow.
Cable cuts: redundancy promises are proven by route structure
For end customers with latency and data-sovereignty requirements, the data center should sell connectivity in transparent route tiers: a standard tier on a best-effort best route, and an assured tier with backup capacity on an independent cable system and a committed switchover time. Selling this way turns international connectivity from an advertising line into a measurable duty, and protects the provider when a cable cut happens, because compensation scope is tied to the redundancy structure the customer chose and paid for.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many international fiber routes does a data center need?
No statutory number exists; the safe operating standard is at least two independent submarine cable systems via two carriers and two landing stations, so a single cable incident cannot strip the facility of international connectivity.
What happens to the data center when a submarine cable is cut?
Traffic fails over to the backup route in the purchased structure; impact depends on whether redundancy is truly independent by cable system or merely a different carrier on the same system, and customers are compensated per their connectivity tier.
What should an international capacity contract watch for?
Declaration of the underlying cable system per circuit, a no-collapse commitment for backup circuits, restoration times, failover mechanics, and express treatment of cable-cut events instead of a default force majeure label.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council