Google and Facebook have announced that they will work together on a new undersea internet cable, with the goal of building network capacity and resilience in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. When completed, the 12.000 km Apricot cable will dock in Japan, Taiwan, Guam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, and will go some way towards meeting the growing demand for data in the region. The two companies affirm that the new South-Marine Web cable will be ready for use by 2024, with an initial environmental capacity of 190 Tb/second, below the current record (detenuated by Google's Dunant cable at 250 Tb /the second).
Submarine web cables
According to a Google blog post, Apricot will fuel the positive effects of its Echo cable system, which will eventually connect the United States, Singapore, Guam, and Indonesia. "The Echo and Apricot cables are complementary subsea systems that will provide benefits with multiple routes to and from Asia, including single routes through South Asia, ensuring a significantly higher degree of resiliency for Google Cloud and digital services," he explained. the company. Google says the new cable systems will be a boon to businesses on both sides of the Pacific, providing lower latency and more bandwidth along routes between Asia and the United States. Citing research on the effects of network investments between 2010 and 2019, the company says the new cables are also likely to boost APAC jobs and GDP. Apricot is the latest in a series of new undersea cables recently unveiled by Google; others include Firmina, Dunant, Blue, and Raman. In all, the company now owns a stake in nineteen different cable networks. Google has also collaborated with Facebook on submarine cable systems. Most famously, the pair worked together on the Pacific Light Cable Network, though the system later had to be shut down due to US-China tensions.