AFRICA – American multinational technology company, Google has announced Equiano, a new private subsea cable that will connect Africa with Europe in a bid to boost its cloud computing infrastructure between the continents.
Once complete, Equiano will start in western Europe and run along the West Coast of Africa, between Portugal and South Africa, with branching units along the way that can be used to extend connectivity to additional African countries.
The first branch is expected to land in Nigeria. This new cable is fully funded by Google, its third private international cable after Dunant and Curie, and its 14th subsea cable investment globally.
Google’s private subsea cables all carry the names of historical luminaries, and Equiano is no different.
Named for Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist who was enslaved as a boy, the Equiano cable is state-of-the-art infrastructure based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology, with approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region.
Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching.
Google reports that this greatly simplifies the allocation of cable capacity, giving it the flexibility to add and reallocate it in different locations as needed.
And because Equiano is fully funded by Google, the company is able to expedite its construction timeline and optimize the number of negotiating parties.
A contract to build the cable with Alcatel Submarine Networks was signed in Q4 2018, and the first phase of the project, connecting South Africa with Portugal, is expected to be completed in 2021.
Between 2016 and 2018, Google invested US$47 billion in capex, which includes investment in improving our global infrastructure.
Equiano will further enhance the world’s highest capacity and best-connected international network.
The company in April completed the “Curie” project, its first private intercontinental cable, connecting Chile to Los Angeles.
Last year, it completed the Dunant transatlantic submarine cable project connecting France and the United States, scheduled to come into service in 2020.
