Nanny Cay, Virgin Islands (U.K.)

Nanny Cay, Virgin Islands (U.K.): Submarine Cable Landing Point

Nanny Cay is a small island in the British Virgin Islands, situated in the Caribbean and connected to the main island of Tortola by a short bridge. Despite its modest scale, Nanny Cay serves as a submarine cable landing point within the British Virgin Islands' broader submarine cable infrastructure. One submarine cable currently lands here, the East-West Cable (EWC), linking the British Virgin Islands into a regional Caribbean corridor that spans multiple island nations.

The East-West Cable establishes connections between the British Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica, enabling inter-island and intra-Caribbean connectivity across the northern and western Caribbean basin. This places Nanny Cay within a regional submarine network rather than an intercontinental one, with the cable spanning a total length of 1,705 kilometres across its route.

Cables Landing at Nanny Cay

The East-West Cable (EWC) is the single submarine cable landing at Nanny Cay. Measuring 1,705 kilometres in length and reaching ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2011 as a draft system, the EWC connects the British Virgin Islands with the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. This cable forms a regional arc across the Caribbean, linking territories that sit within the Greater and Lesser Antilles groupings and providing direct submarine connectivity between these three distinct island jurisdictions.

Regional Context

Within the British Virgin Islands, Nanny Cay is one of two submarine cable landing points, the other being Tortola, which hosts three cables. The British Virgin Islands as a whole has four submarine cables landing across these two locations, with the first cable having reached service in 1995 and an average cable length of 2,825 kilometres across the national portfolio. Nanny Cay's single cable contrasts with Tortola's more extensive cable presence, making Tortola the primary hub for submarine connectivity in the territory.

Network Role

Nanny Cay functions as a single-cable terminus within the Caribbean submarine cable graph, hosting the East-West Cable as its sole submarine connection. This landing point extends the reach of Caribbean regional connectivity by anchoring one end of a 1,705-kilometre system that bridges the British Virgin Islands with Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, two of the larger telecommunications markets in the Caribbean basin.

As a single-cable landing point alongside a more heavily connected peer at Tortola, Nanny Cay represents a supplementary node in the British Virgin Islands' submarine cable footprint, broadening the territory's geographic reach within the regional Caribbean network.