Haina, Dominican Republic

Haina: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Haina is a landing point on the coast of the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation sharing the island of Hispaniola. As a submarine cable landing point, Haina connects the Dominican Republic to other territories across the Caribbean basin. One submarine cable lands at Haina, linking the country to Jamaica and the British Virgin Islands along a regional Caribbean corridor.

The single cable serving Haina, the East-West Cable (EWC), reflects the inter-island character of this landing point. Rather than providing intercontinental connectivity, the EWC establishes direct regional links among Caribbean island territories, positioning Haina as a node within the intra-Caribbean submarine cable network.

Cables Landing at Haina

The East-West Cable (EWC) is the sole submarine cable landing at Haina. Spanning 1,705 km, this cable reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2011 and carries a draft status in the record. In addition to Haina in the Dominican Republic, the EWC connects to landing points in Jamaica and the British Virgin Islands, forming a triangular inter-island link across the northern and central Caribbean Sea.

Regional Context

Within the Dominican Republic, submarine cable infrastructure is distributed across five landing points. Puerto Plata and Punta Cana each host three cables, making them the most connected landing points in the country, while Haina, Cacique, and Santo Domingo each host one cable. Haina ranks in the top 60% of Dominican Republic landing points by cable count, placing it alongside Cacique and Santo Domingo as single-cable termini rather than multi-cable hubs.

Network Role

Haina functions as a single-cable terminus, serving the regional Caribbean corridor established by the East-West Cable. The EWC's connections to Jamaica and the British Virgin Islands extend the Dominican Republic's submarine cable reach westward and eastward across the Caribbean, providing a direct inter-island route that complements the broader Dominican cable network concentrated at Puerto Plata and Punta Cana. The Dominican Republic's submarine cable infrastructure as a whole spans six cables with an average length of 9,113 km, reflecting a mix of regional and longer-haul routes; the EWC at Haina represents the country's short-range, intra-Caribbean dimension of that network.

As one of five landing points in the Dominican Republic, Haina's role is defined by its Caribbean regional reach rather than intercontinental scope. In the regional submarine cable graph, this single-cable landing point adds a westward and eastern inter-island connection that broadens the geographic spread of Dominican Republic cable landings beyond the country's more heavily served northern and eastern coastal sites.