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Deep Connection
Google announced Friday that the company plans on building its third international, under-sea internet cable.
The company is calling the cable “Equiano” and toldReuters that it expects the cable to be at least partially operational by some time in 2021, when a link between Portugal and South Africa will be completed. The project suggests that, just like Amazon and other tech giants, Google is working to cement its role as the basis for the world’s digital infrastructure.
Global Plans
This April, Google completed its first international internet cable, which spans from Chile to Los Angeles, California. Next year, the company plans on finishing a transatlantic cable between France and the U.S., per Reuters.
Equiano is expected to be the first subsea internet cable that will incorporate optical switches at the fiber-pair level, which just means that the signals flowing through the cable will be delivered more efficiently than those through other cables.
Google announces new subsea cable ‘Equiano’, connecting Africa and Europe
(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google on Friday announced a new subsea cable dubbed “Equiano” that will connect Africa with Europe, as it boosts its cloud computing infrastructure.
Equiano, fully funded by Google, is the company’s third private international cable.
The search engine giant, which has invested $47 billion in improving its global technology infrastructure over the last three years, said Equiano is the company’s 14th subsea cable investment globally.
“Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching,” Google said in a blog post.
Google said a contract to build the cable with Alcatel Submarine Networks was signed in the fourth quarter of 2018, and the first phase of the project, connecting South Africa with Portugal, is expected to be completed in 2021.
The company in April completed the “Curie” project, its first private intercontinental cable, connecting Chile to Los Angeles.
It also announced last year the Dunant transatlantic submarine cable project connecting France and the United States. The 6,600 km cable is scheduled to come into service in 2020.
Subsea cables form the backbone of the internet by carrying 99 percent of the world’s data traffic.