SubCom celebrated a milestone this month when it became the first company to deploy 1 million kilometers of subsea cable systems.
A SubCom worker loads fiber-optic cable to a ship. The company employs 1,100 people at its plant in Newington, NH.
One of the world’s biggest developers of undersea fiber-optic cables employs 1,100 people at its manufacturing campus across the road from a shopping mall in Newington.
SubCom designs, manufactures, deploys and maintains high-speed fiber-optic networks for telecom companies and tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
While the company’s headquarters is in New Jersey, its manufacturing plant — and the bulk of its workforce — is in New Hampshire, where it makes giant spools of cable destined for the ocean floor.
“During the deployment of a million kilometers, we’ve connected six of the seven continents,” CEO David Coughlan said during a presentation to employees and invited dignitaries. “We’ve landed in more than 60 countries. We’ve either directly or indirectly connected 99% of the world’s population.”
SubCom has deployed enough cable to circle the equator 25 times, SubCom says. It’s one of three companies in the world competing in the undersea cable industry and the only one based in the United States. It current projects include work in Egypt, France, Norway, Indonesia and the Polynesian Islands.
“We’ve crossed the Atlantic 15 times and counting. We’ve crossed the Pacific 13 times and counting,” Coughlan said. “We’re currently working in the sea today in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.”
SubCom is owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based private equity firm that acquired the company in 2018 from TE Connectivity. The Eatontown, New Jersey-based company employs 1,600 people. It also operates a maritime division and cable-laying ship operations in Baltimore, Maryland.
The company’s access to the Piscataqua River, which provides access for the ships that transport cable to its destination points, was a strategic decision when the site was chosen decades ago.
SubCom CEO David Coughlan greets Gov. Kelly Ayotte at the company’s Newington plant on May 15. (Courtesy)
“We’re incredibly proud not only of the company, but of the support system that we have here that enables us to do it,” Coughlan told NH Business Review. “New Hampshire is the right home for this, whether it be the highly educated employees that we get here or the access to this river closest to the ocean. The site was picked because of that river, and because of the economic conditions of New Hampshire and of the ability to attract the talent here.”
Elizabeth Chilton, president of the University of New Hampshire, noted that more than 50 UNH alumni work at SubCom. But the bond extends beyond employment.
“A few of the kilometers of cable we celebrate today are tied to a multiyear grant from the Office of Naval Research, supporting a collaborative effort to study underwater soundscapes and oceanographic processes in the Gulf of Maine,” Chilton told the group. “The data acquired through this cabled ocean observation system will be accessible and valuable to research and education at UNH, as well as to the government, industry, nonprofits and public users of the Gulf of Maine.”
SubCom is the exclusive undersea cable contractor to the U.S. military and has become a strategic player in a technology race with China, “laying a web of internet and surveillance cables across the ocean floor,” Reuters reported in 2023, citing unnamed SubCom and U.S. Navy sources.
“This dual role has made SubCom increasingly valuable to Washington as global internet infrastructure – from undersea cables to data centers and 5G mobile networks – risks fracturing into two systems, one backed by the United States, the other controlled by China,” Reuters reporter Joe Brock wrote.
Ambassador Steve Lang, U.S. coordinator for international communication and information policy, was among the dignitaries who addressed SubCom employees. While he did not address China, he noted the company’s importance to the government.
SubCom celebrated a milestone this month when it became the first company to deploy 1 million kilometers of undersea cable systems. (Courtesy)
“Our technological leadership is the foundation of our global strategic competitiveness,” Lang said. “Strengthening global telecommunications networks, promoting trusted suppliers and increasing subsea cable resilience are all high priorities for the Trump administration, and they are key objectives for our team in the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy at the State Department.”
Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who read a proclamation in SubCom’s honor, noted the company’s importance to national security and its role in evolution of modern digital infrastructure.
“The idea that this goes 25 times around the globe is a testament to the phenomenal accomplishments that all of you have made possible today,” said Ayotte, who said she first visited SubCom when she was running for U.S. Senate.
The SubCom plant first opened in 1955 and has changed hands several times in its 70-year history. The industry’s origins date to the mid-1800s, when transatlantic cables were first used to transmit telegraph traffic. In 1874, the CS Faraday delivered the first transatlantic cable connection in the United States to Rye Beach in New Hampshire, according to Portsmouth historian J. Dennis Robinson.
Bob Suydam, who led tours of the company’s plant after the presentation, started working for SubCom 35 years ago, when it was known as Simplex Wire & Cable Company. He interned at the company for a summer when he was a business student at UNH and started in the company’s purchasing department.
“So many people still don’t have an appreciation as to what we do right here in New Hampshire,” he said.
While fiber optics have evolved, the process to create the backbone of global communications has old roots.
“You look at the technology, and a lot of it is based on tried-and-true cable manufacturing equipment,” Suydam said. “It’s much more technically capable, but it does the same thing. And obviously the product that we’re building is just unbelievable. The amount of data going through those cables is astounding.”
