The new private system will provide better resilience for the network that underpins Google’s consumer and enterprise products – joining Google’s other portfolio of cables including, Curie, Dunant and Equiano.
According to Bikash Koley, VP of Google Global Network, private subsea cables enables Google to plan effectively for the future capacity needs of its global customers and users, it also adds a layer of security beyond what’s available over the public internet.
Once live, the Grace Hopper cable will be one of the first new system to connect the US and UK since 2003, increasing capacity on this busy global route and powering Google services.
The company has entered into a contract with subsea cable provider SubCom to build the new system and the project is expected to be completed in 2022.
The news also marks the first investment by Google in a subsea cable route to Spain, which will help to better integrate the upcoming Google Cloud region in Madrid into its global infrastructure.
The Grace Hopper cable will feature 16 fibre pairs, 32 fibres in total. Google and Subcom engineers collaborated on incorporating novel optical fibre switching into the cable, for increased network reliability, enabling Google to better move traffic around outages.
The cable is named after computer science pioneer Grace Brewster Murray Hopper, who is renowned for her work on one of the first linkers (compilers), which was critical in the development of the COBOL programming language.
She’s also credited with finding an actual “bug” in a program; her team tracked down the source of a short circuit on the early Harvard Mark II computer to a moth trapped in a panel.
In honour of Grace and other amazing women in telecoms and tech, Capacity is accepting nominations for the Global Women in Telco and Tech Awards, taking place this September.
So if you know of any remarkable women in the wider telco & tech sector deserving of a special recognition, nominate them for FREE.
Awards include Best Woman in Subsea, Best Women in Wholesale Telecoms, Best Marketing and Social Media Campaign and Agent of Change (open to both men and women), to name a few.
> Click here to submit a nomination for the 2020 Global Women in Telco & Tech Awards <
Earlier this month, Google confirmed the completion of a trial using its subsea cable to detect earthquakes and tsunamis.
