Google invests in new undersea cable from Australia to Southeast Asia
Google announced Wednesday that it's investing in a new subsea cable system that will run between Australia and Asia. The investment is Google's latest move to strengthen its ties to the APAC region.
Called Indigo, the cable will connect Perth, Sydney, and Singapore, with a branch to Jakarta. To build the cable, Google is partnering with AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra, while Alcatel Submarine Networks will construct the cable. Span approximately 9,000km, it's expected to be completed by mid-2019.
Indigo will initially have two fiber pairs with a design capacity of around 18 terabits per second -- enough capacity for people in Singapore and Sydney to join 8 million simultaneous high-definition Google Hangout video conference calls.
Indigo is the latest effort to build out subsea cable capacity across the Asia-Pacific region, as data usage grows there. Google has already invested in four other submarine cables in the region, including the FASTER and PLCN cables.
Google considers its network infrastructure a key part of its pitch to potential Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers, boasting the largest network backbone of any public cloud provider. In November, GCP opened its Tokyo region, and it has plans to open regions in Singapore and Sydney this year.
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