AT&T Bandon Cable Landing Station, Oregon

This facility is located above the beach where two trans-Pacific submarine fiber optic communication cables, known as the China-US Cable Network and TCP-5, come ashore. The cables remain buried under the beach and up the bluff, until they enter the buildings here, which house equipment that maintains and processes the signals, and connects them to the national communications grid. The China-US Cable Network cable went online in 2000, and was the largest trans-Pacific cable system at the time. It includes a link to another cable landing site near San Luis Obispo, in California, as well as two landing sites in China, and branches connecting to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Guam. The TCP-5 cable went online in 1996, and links six landing sites, including ones in Japan, Guam, Hawaii, and here. The cables are owned by different consortiums of international communications companies, but the Bandon Cable Landing Station is owned by AT&T. It is one of a dozen or so cable-landing stations on the west coast of the United States, which together contain nearly all of the internet and telephone connectivity between the US and the rest of the world, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. There is another, smaller landing station building on this road, for the cable known as FASTER, which makes a landing on the shore here as well.