Google Announces High-Capacity Subsea Cable Linking Portugal to South Africa
Google introduces Equiano, a private subsea cable connecting Europe and Africa with twenty times the capacity of previous regional lines. The project incorporates innovative optical switching technology and features branching units for future expansion.
Google announces Equiano, a new private subsea cable that connects Portugal and South Africa to significantly boost internet capacity. Alcatel Submarine Networks builds the cable, with the first phase scheduled for completion in 2021. Named after Nigerian writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, this project marks Google's third private subsea cable following Dunant and Curie.
The new cable stands out as the first to utilize optical switching at the fiber pair level, which makes it much easier to allocate capacity as needed. Equiano carries about twenty times the capacity of the last cable built to serve this specific region. The infrastructure also includes numerous branching units to connect additional countries along the route, with the first branch extending to Lagos, Nigeria.
Google currently operates no data centers on the African continent and keeps any future plans for such facilities private. This makes fast, reliable connections to Europe an absolute necessity for the company's current operations. However, industry observers speculate that Google lays this groundwork to prepare for a potential future data center launch in South Africa or neighboring regions.