Google has announced in a blog post the construction of its third privately-funded international subsea cable. Equiano is the name of this cable and will start in Portugal and run along the West Coast of Africa way down to South Africa.
Once this is completed, it expected to offer 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region, according to Google. Based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology, the new cable will aim for cost-effectively which increases cable capacity with additional fiber pairs and power-optimized repeater designs. Google says Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, making it easier to add and reallocate capacity in different locations.
In collaboration with French firm Alcatel Submarine Networks, the first phase of the Google’s project, will connect Portugal to South Africa, should be completed in 2021. After that, Google will add branches to extend connectivity to other African countries and to East Africa.
The first branch is expected to land in Nigeria. The cable is named after Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born writer who helped lead the anti-slave trade movement in the 1780s.
Google’s has other two privatey-funded subsea and are also named after historical luminaries: The Curie connects Chile to Los Angeles, and the Dunant will connect the US to the French Atlantic coast. Google has now announced investments in 14 subsea cables globally.
