Google is building three new undersea cables to increase its competitiveness in the cloud business market. It is currently third in market share behind Amazon and Microsoft.
The cables will be built to connect five new regions for the company — Montreal, the Netherlands, Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong.
New Undersea Cables
Google outlined its new plan to connect to new regions with the help of three new undersea cables. This is an effort to boost its cloud computing infrastructure, which would connect the United States to three new regions of the world.
Three new undersea cables will be built connecting the country to other regions of the world. The Curie cable will connect Los Angeles to Chile, the Havfrue cable will connect the east coast of the United States to Denmark and Ireland, and the HK-G cable connecting Guam to Hong Kong.
Google's previous cables have been built with contributions from other companies, its new Curie cable connecting Los Angeles to Chile will be the company's longest and fully private cable at 6,200 miles. A data center was built in Chile in 2015. The cable is named after scientist Marie Curie. It will be Chile's largest single data pipe.
The Havfrue cable will be built along with Facebook, Aqua Comms, and Bulk Infrastructure. This 4,500-mile cable will connect the east coast of the United States to Denmark with a stop in Ireland. Havfrue is Danish for mermaid.
The shortest cable HK-G cable which is only 2,400 miles. Google partners with RTI-C and NEC to create this cable. This will help connect to major hubs in Australia, East Asia, and North America.
These new cables will help connect customers in five new regions that Google will be opening this year. The Netherlands and Montreal regions will open at the beginning of 2018 with Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong to follow.
All three new cables are expected to be completed by 2019.
Investment in three new cables brings Google involvement to 11 cables. In the last three years, Google says it has invested $30 billion improving its infrastructure. Google parent company Alphabet owns a massive network of fiber-optic cables and data centers. This infrastructure adds up to the world's biggest private network, it handles 25 percent of worldwide internet traffic.
The new cables are being built to speed the transfer of data and reroute users in case a region fails or gets overloaded.
