Strategic Infrastructure Development: Amazon’s Revised Telecommunications Proposal for Maryland

According to Amazon's corporate communications, the company has submitted a zoning amendment request to Worcester County, Maryland, seeking to designate a Power Feed Equipment (PFE) building and an associated international telecommunications cable as permitted uses on Commercial Airport-zoned land at the Ocean City Municipal Airport. The filing follows the County's July 2026 adoption of a moratorium on data centers and cable landing stations and constitutes a scaled-down revision of an earlier, larger proposal originally contemplated for the same jurisdiction.

Facility Scope and Zoning Request

The proposed PFE building is defined as an unmanned, secure telecommunications structure with a footprint under 700 square feet — comparable to two shipping containers placed side by side. Per the filing, the facility's sole operational function is to supply electrical power to the Fastnet subsea cable and relay the optical signal onward to existing terrestrial networks. Amazon states the building will contain no data storage, data management, or data computation equipment and cannot be converted into a data center or cable landing station. These restrictions are embedded directly in the proposed zoning text.

Amazon has indicated it will lease the airport land from Worcester County and will partner with the Maryland Broadband Cooperative (MdBC) for facility development.

Compliance Path Following the Moratorium

The amendment request is positioned as a direct response to community concerns that drove the County's July 2026 moratorium on data centers and cable landing stations. The original project scope reportedly contemplated a multi-system facility housing both submarine and terrestrial optical terminating equipment on site. The current submission removes those terminating functions, relocating them to existing Amazon infrastructure elsewhere.

Subsea cables carry 99% of the world's international data traffic, per the filing; Fastnet is described as a new transatlantic cable linking Maryland to County Cork, Ireland, adding a redundant North America–Europe data pathway.

Tracking Points for Somerset County

Although the request is filed in adjacent Worcester County, the statutory mechanism carries relevance for Somerset County planners monitoring Eastern Shore land-use decisions. A defined permitted-use category for ancillary telecommunications infrastructure on commercial airport land — drafted with explicit use-preclusion clauses — establishes a template for how neighboring jurisdictions may scope similar requests.

The filing also establishes a Community Benefit Fund for Maryland's Eastern Shore, administered through local stakeholder engagement. Items to monitor:

• Worcester County Planning Commission action on the zoning text amendment.
• Final language of the use-preclusion clauses binding the facility definition.
• Any cross-jurisdictional coordination requests directed to Somerset County on adjacent Eastern Shore infrastructure planning.