Baie Longue, Saint Martin

Baie Longue, Saint Martin: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Baie Longue is a submarine cable landing point located on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean. The island is divided between two separate jurisdictions — the French collectivity of Saint Martin to the north and the Dutch territory of Sint Maarten to the south — and Baie Longue sits within the French portion. As a landing point, it connects Saint Martin into the wider Caribbean and North American submarine cable network. One submarine cable lands at Baie Longue, linking the island to Sint Maarten and the United States.

The cable landing here, the Sint Maarten Puerto Rico Network One, establishes a regional corridor spanning the northeastern Caribbean and connecting to the United States, making Baie Longue a node in a route that bridges French Saint Martin with both its Dutch neighbor and North American cable infrastructure. The cable's draft status reflects the ongoing development of submarine connectivity in this part of the Caribbean.

Cables Landing at Baie Longue, Saint Martin

Sint Maarten Puerto Rico Network One (SMPR-1) is a 375-kilometer submarine cable that reached ready-for-service status in 2004, making it the earliest cable to land in Saint Martin. In addition to Baie Longue in Saint Martin, SMPR-1 connects to Sint Maarten and the United States, forming a short but regionally significant link between the two halves of the island of Saint Martin and onward to Puerto Rico. The cable carries a draft designation, indicating its status within the broader documentation of Caribbean submarine cable systems.

Regional Context

Saint Martin's submarine cable infrastructure is distributed across three landing points: Baie Longue, Marigot, and St. Louis, each hosting one cable. Baie Longue is therefore one of three equally matched landing points by cable count on the island. Together, these three sites give Saint Martin a modest but geographically distributed submarine cable presence across its territory.

Network Role

Baie Longue functions as a single-cable terminus, hosting only the SMPR-1 system. Through this cable, the landing point participates in a corridor that links Saint Martin directly to Sint Maarten and to the United States, enabling connectivity between the French and Dutch sides of the divided island and onward to North American networks. At 375 kilometers, SMPR-1 is considerably shorter than the Saint Martin average cable length of 1,422 kilometers, reflecting its role as a short-haul intra-island and regional connection rather than a long-distance intercontinental route.

As one of three landing points sharing submarine cable infrastructure across Saint Martin, Baie Longue contributes to a distributed landing architecture on the island. Its position in the regional submarine cable graph is that of a localized node connecting the French collectivity into a Caribbean corridor that spans two jurisdictions of the same island and extends north toward the United States.