Fiber is Coming
to Catalina Island

Starlink is a technological marvel—for the places it was built for. Avalon isn't one of them.

Starlink was designed for rural, low-density areas. Avalon is a compact town of roughly 4,000 year-round residents and over a million annual visitors, concentrated in about one square mile. The canyon geography blocks signals for many homes. Upload speeds are a fraction of fiber's capability—critical for video calls, remote work, and healthcare.

We built a calculator that shows the math: Why Starlink Won't Work for Avalon →

The project uses proven submarine cable installation methods employed worldwide. We're coordinating environmental review with multiple agencies including California Coastal Commission, BOEM, and Army Corps of Engineers. The cables are buried below the seafloor and require minimal disturbance—far less invasive than the 1920s cable that was dragged up repeatedly because it wasn't properly buried. The landing sites use existing developed areas with no new coastal disruption.

Close to 30 submarine cables land on California's mainland today—connecting Hawaii, Asia, South America, and beyond. This has been done many times before, for much bigger islands and longer distances.

The incumbent telephone company collected fees for high-cost areas like this but never invested in proper infrastructure. Others claimed they would build a cable and wasted years before giving up.

It took persistence, investment, and a lot of dedication to convince the various authorities and agencies of the true need here—especially the socio-economic impacts, communications reliability issues, and lack of existing capacity to deliver FCC and CPUC standards for broadband.

AVX is building open-access infrastructure. That means any ISP can use our fiber backbone to compete for your business. Rather than replacing existing providers, this project enables them—and new entrants—to offer better service. Competition benefits everyone. The goal is more choices and better connectivity for residents, not consolidation.

Catalina Island Health is a Critical Access Hospital serving a remote community. Modern healthcare requires reliable, high-bandwidth connectivity for electronic health records, telemedicine consultations with mainland specialists, medical imaging transfers, and emergency coordination. When someone has a heart attack or stroke on the island, milliseconds matter—and current connectivity puts lives at risk. Fiber enables healthcare that island residents deserve.

This project serves residents first. The hospital, the schools, local businesses trying to compete in a modern economy. Better connectivity helps the people who live here year-round run their businesses, educate their children, and access healthcare—not just process credit card transactions faster during peak season.

The 1923 San Pedro-Catalina telephone cable wasn't properly buried. It was dragged up multiple times by ship anchors, causing repeated service outages. Eventually the island switched to microwave transmission in the 1960s—cutting-edge for its time, but technology designed before the internet existed. Our new submarine fiber will be buried properly below the seafloor with redundant paths. Full cable history →

Target service launch is 2028. Submarine cable projects require marine surveys, environmental review across multiple agencies, cable manufacturing (these are made to order), and careful installation. We could rush it—but that's how you get a cable that gets dragged up by anchors. We're building this right, once.

AVX Networks is a California telecommunications utility (CPUC Certificate U-7406-C) that won a competitive federal grant because nobody else stepped up. We're not the Island Company. We're not SCE. We're not Catalina Express. We're building infrastructure that any ISP can use to compete for your business—the opposite of how things have worked on this island for a century.

Simple physics: submarine cables have to land somewhere on the mainland. Huntington Beach offers a direct route with favorable seafloor conditions, strong municipal support from Mayor McKeon and the city council, and excellent connectivity to regional fiber networks. The redundant landing sites provide geographic diversity—so if one path is damaged, service continues via the other.

The funding comes from the Federal Funding Account (FFA), which draws from American Recovery Plan funds held by the US Treasury. These are federal tax dollars allocated by Congress for broadband infrastructure in unserved communities. The grant was awarded through a competitive process at the CPUC.

Follow our progress at avxnetworks.com or reach out directly at info@avxnetworks.com. We'll share major milestones as the project progresses through survey, permitting, manufacturing, and installation.