Google and Facebook will build a new submarine cable to connect Japan and Southeast Asia in 2024
On August 16, Google and Facebook jointly announced that
they will participate in the development of a new submarine cable system in
2024 to improve Internet connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
On August 16, Google and Facebook jointly announced that
they will participate in the development of a new submarine cable system in
2024 to improve Internet connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
Facebook said that this infrastructure project called
"Apricot" will connect Japan, Singapore, Taiwan Province of China,
Guam, the Philippines and Indonesia to help meet people's growing demand for
broadband access and 5G wireless connections. In March of this year, the
company announced two trans-Pacific submarine cables Bifrost and Echo
connecting Singapore and the west coast of the United States. Google
participated in the construction of the latter.
Google stated in a blog post that Echo and Apricot are two
complementary underwater systems that will increase the resilience of Google
Cloud and other digital services of the company. According to Facebook, the
initial design capacity of this new optical fiber link across the Asia-Pacific
region exceeds 190Tbps.
At present, the two Silicon Valley giants are investing in
the construction of Internet infrastructure in areas where they believe the
growth potential is greatest. Google also announced a $10 billion investment
plan last year to help India advance its digitalization process in the next 5
to 7 years.
In recent years, Google has participated in the construction
of a number of submarine optical cables. Google is expanding its huge global
submarine cable network and expanding to new regions to accelerate the
development of its cloud computing business and catch up with rivals Microsoft
and Amazon.