Tlell, BC, Canada

Tlell, BC, Canada: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tlell is a small, unincorporated community located on the east coast of Graham Island, part of the Haida Gwaii archipelago in British Columbia, Canada. As a submarine cable landing point, Tlell connects this remote island community to Canada's broader domestic cable network. One submarine cable lands at Tlell, the Connected Coast system, which links multiple Canadian endpoints and forms part of a regionally significant domestic connectivity corridor along British Columbia's coast and island communities.

The Connected Coast cable, which received its ready-for-service designation in 2024, is a domestic Canadian cable, meaning all of its endpoints lie within Canada. This makes Tlell part of an intra-national submarine cable route rather than an intercontinental one, supporting connectivity between Canadian communities — including remote and island-based settlements — that are difficult to serve through terrestrial infrastructure alone.

Cables Landing at Tlell, BC, Canada

Connected Coast (RFS 2024, draft) is the sole submarine cable landing at Tlell. It is a domestic Canadian cable, with all of its other endpoints also located in Canada. The Connected Coast system is designed to extend submarine cable connectivity to underserved and remote communities along the British Columbia coastline and on islands such as those comprising Haida Gwaii. Tlell, as one of the landing points on this cable, benefits directly from the network reach that Connected Coast provides across Canada's Pacific coastal communities.

Regional Context

Within Canada's submarine cable landscape — spanning 21 cables across 155 landing points — Tlell sits among a number of single-cable landing points. It shares this position with Addenbroke Island, BC, also served by a single cable, while other British Columbia landing points such as Prince Rupert and Vancouver each host two cables. Tlell's status as a one-cable landing point places it in the top 97 percent of Canadian landing points by cable count, reflecting the relatively distributed nature of Canada's domestic submarine cable infrastructure, which reaches many small and remote communities.

Network Role

Tlell functions as a single-cable terminus on the Connected Coast system, providing submarine cable connectivity to the Haida Gwaii island community of Graham Island. Rather than serving as a multi-cable hub or an intercontinental gateway, Tlell's role is specifically domestic — extending reach to a geographically isolated part of British Columbia that terrestrial networks do not easily serve. The Connected Coast landing at Tlell represents a point where submarine cable infrastructure addresses the connectivity needs of a remote island community within Canada's Pacific coastal geography.

In the broader Canadian submarine cable graph, Tlell illustrates how domestic cable systems increasingly target remote and island communities, complementing the international-facing hubs found at larger Canadian landing points and filling in connectivity for communities on the margins of the terrestrial network.