September 16, 2021

Google has completed the U.K. leg of its private trans-Atlantic subsea cable, which connects the U.S., U.K. and Spain and offers more secure connections than the public internet.

Named after computer scientist Grace Hopper, who was involved in the development of the COBOL programming language, the subsea cable uses new optical fiber switching to increase capacity.

Google funded the subsea 16-fiber pair cable linking New York to Bude, Cornwall, about 250 miles south of London, and Bilbao on Spain’s Atlantic north coast. It will also support Google’s new cloud region in the Spanish capital Madrid.

The Grace Hopper cable is a milestone for Google, as it is the tech giant’s first self-funded cable to the U.K. and its first self-funded cable to Spain. It is also one of the first new cables to connect the U.S. and U.K. since 2003.

This signals Google’s ongoing investment in the U.K. to support users of its top products such as Google Maps, Search, Gmail, various Workspace apps and Meet, as well as U.K. organizations that utilize Google Cloud Platform.

The subsea cable also supports video meetings and other online services that replaced in-person meetings during the pandemic.

Google’s other subsea cables are Curie, between Chile and Los Angeles; Equiano, between Portugal and South Africa; Dunant, which connects the US. .and France, along with a Havfrue link in Denmark; the recently announced a subsea cable called Apricot, which connects Singapore, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia; and the companion Echo subsea cable, which connects the U.S., Singapore, Guam and Indonesia.

Undersea cables are becoming part of the geopolitical calculations globally. The Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, sounded the alarm this week about threats to subsea internet cable infrastructure, referring mainly to China’s growing influence on private subsea cables by its own internet giants.

For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.