Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory

Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Diego Garcia is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago, situated in the central Indian Ocean and administered as part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. As an isolated atoll in one of the world's major oceanic basins, Diego Garcia sits along a significant east–west maritime corridor linking the Arabian Peninsula to Australia and its territories. One submarine cable lands at Diego Garcia, connecting it to a long-distance intercontinental route that spans the Indian Ocean.

That cable is the Oman Australia Cable (OAC), a system that reaches across the Indian Ocean to link Oman, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Australia. Diego Garcia's position on this route places it as an intermediate landing point on one of the longer submarine cable systems in the region, reinforcing connectivity across a stretch of ocean with relatively few landing points.

Cables Landing at Diego Garcia

The Oman Australia Cable (OAC) is an 11,000 km submarine cable system with a ready-for-service (RFS) year of 2022, listed as draft. The cable connects Oman, Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Australia, forming a continuous route across the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia serves as one of the intermediate landing points on this system, positioned between Oman to the northwest and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Australia to the southeast.

Regional Context

Within the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia is the sole submarine cable landing point, making it the territory's only connection to the international submarine cable network. With one cable and one landing point across the entire territory, the infrastructure is centralized entirely at Diego Garcia.

Network Role

Diego Garcia functions as a single-cable landing point on the OAC system, acting as an intermediate terminus along an intercontinental route that spans the Indian Ocean between Oman and Australia. Its position on the cable provides a link in the chain between the Arabian Sea and the eastern Indian Ocean, with the Cocos (Keeling) Islands serving as the next waypoint toward Australia. Rather than a multi-cable hub, Diego Garcia represents a single node on one long-haul system.

In the broader Indian Ocean submarine cable graph, Diego Garcia's inclusion on the OAC extends terrestrial network access to one of the most remote and sparsely connected points in the central Indian Ocean, bridging a wide oceanic gap between the Arabian Peninsula and the Australian coast.