Google has announced plans in a YouTube video that it plans to build a new submarine fiber optic cable connecting the
United States and Europe.
Per the report, the Grace Hopper Cable, named after a computer programming pioneer and Rear-Admiral in the United
States Navy, will be equipped with 16 fiber pairs that will incorporate advances in optical fiber switching. This will allow
for increased reliability in global communications by enabling Google to move traffic around if demand changes or if
there are connectivity issues. The company said that this is the first time this technology has been deployed and is part of
what makes Grace Hopper so unique, and noted that Google is continuously working to advance technologies like this to
improve subsea network resiliency.
The Grace Hopper Cable will run from the U.S. to the U.K. and Spain. Google customers will benefit from this cable by
better network resilience and reliability. It will join the other private cables that are part of Googleโs network: Curie,
Dunant and Equiano. It will further connect Google Cloud regions and Googleโs customers to one another.
When it is completed in 2022, the Grace Hopper cable will be one of only a handful of new cables to connect the U.S.
and the U.K. since 2003, when the transatlantic route was saturated by overbuilding during the cable boom around the
turn of the century. It will also mark the first investment by Google in a subsea cable network to Spain.
The Grace Hopper Cable will also be better able to connect America, the U.K. and the rest of Europe with the Equiano
cable, which is currently under construction between Portugal and the West Coast of Africa. It will increase capacity on
this busy transatlantic global crossroad and power Google services such as Meet, Gmail and Google Cloud. It will be
Googleโs fourth wholly owned cable. In addition to these private cables, the company is also a member of a number of
consortiums that jointly operate cables around the world. In total, Google has now announced investments in 5 subsea
cable projects.
