GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY, September 11 — Construction has begun on Washington state’s first subsea cable landing station in more than 25 years, with Amazon Web Services signed as the first customer. The project is led by Toptana Technologies, a tribally owned telecommunications company created by the Quinault Indian Nation. The facility is designed to support multiple transpacific cable systems and connect directly to a 200-mile fiber backbone running between Seattle and Hillsboro, Ore.
That node reaches into the wider United States, providing a port of call for customers using subsea cabling to bring in intercontinental traffic.
From digital divide to digital gateway
Tribal leaders say the venture began as a response to the digital divide on the reservation, then expanded into a broader effort to establish long-term digital infrastructure on the Washington coast. Jeff Capoeman, Jr., chairman of Toptana, told Tribal Business News the cable landing station would become important infrastructure for both the tribe and the region. “This is a mechanism to establish a relationship with the rest of the digital world and the global economy as a whole, rather than being a bystander,” Capoeman said.
“It’s both growth, diversification, and realistically, it’s an enhancement of the Nation’s sovereignty.” The Sta’O’Nuk cable, owned by Amazon Web Services, will be the first system to land at the site and is expected to become operational in 2029. The name comes from the Quinault language, meaning “lightning serpent,” and was granted to AWS with cultural permission, according to a news release from Assured Communications and Toptana.
An ‘easy button’ for cable landings
Jeff Ogren, Toptana’s general manager, said the company designed the project to simplify the process of landing subsea cables and connecting them to fiber networks. He said Sta’O’Nuk cable will have nearly as much capacity as Washington’s existing fiber network. “These subsea cables are not a trivial kind of thing to design, engineer, fund and then implement and deploy all the way across an ocean,” Ogren said.
“We created an ‘easy button’ for our customers for getting them connected and moving inland.” That model includes offshore bores, a fully built landing station and a backhaul network that intersects major fiber rings in Seattle and Hillsboro. Ogren said the team built the backbone early so customers would have a clear path inland once the landing station comes online.
“You can imagine the impact on the GDP not only to the local community on the reservation and Grays Harbor County itself, but the state is going to receive significant GDP growth as a result of these cables,” Ogren said. “This is where the digital economy rides — on these subsea cables that connect one continent to another.”
Years of groundwork
The milestone follows several years of groundwork. Toptana and its partners completed a feasibility study to validate the site, built the north-south fiber route before beginning construction on the landing station and worked through a multi-year permitting process that included river crossings, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approvals and a Class IV forest practices conversion. Washington had not landed a new subsea cable since 1999, and tribal leaders say clearing those hurdles was essential to opening the coast to new systems.
Assured Communications serves as Toptana’s strategic partner and program manager, guiding the project from feasibility through construction. ESA Environmental handled permitting and environmental review, working closely with Quinault fisheries officials and county regulators.
Highland Associates designed the landing station. Mox Networks built the north-south backbone and is constructing the east-west route that will connect Ocean Shores to the existing fiber corridor. The landing station sits on tribally owned fee land in unincorporated Grays Harbor County, outside the Quinault reservation.
That status placed the project under county jurisdiction and made it eligible for a Washington sales-and-use tax exemption enacted through SHB 1711. What to watch next: construction progress on the east-west route connecting Ocean Shores to the existing fiber corridor, and whether additional transpacific cable operators follow AWS to the site ahead of the Sta’O’Nuk system’s expected 2029 operational date.
