Google pulls its third subsea cable. It will connect Europe and South Africa

On June 28, 2019 Google announced construction of the third submarine cable. It will connect Europe to Africa. The project received the name Equiano — in honor of the African writer Olauda Ekviano whom sold in slavery and who redeemed afterwards to himself freedom.

The American Internet giant stretches a fiber line of communication which beginning will be in Lisbon (Portugal), and the end — in Cape Town (Republic of South Africa). Also intermediate connection in Lagos will be organized (Nigeria, Olauda Ekviano was born there).

Construction of the Equiano cable began — on a photo this process is imprinted

For deployment of this cable Google involved Alcatel Submarine Networks company which specializes in such projects in cooperation. The parties signed the agreement still in the fourth quarter 2018. It is going to complete the works on the first stage of the project by 2021.

Google did not open the expenses planned for laying of a new cable and only noted that investments will become the 14th in value in the history of the company.

Google claims that Equiano will be able to offer approximately by 20 times big network transmission capacity, than cables which by the end of June, 2019 service the region, thanks to technology  of space multiplexing   (Spatial Division Multiplexing).

In development of computing infrastructure in three years of Google spent about $47 billion. Submarine cables are the technology cornerstone of all Internet as through them there pass 99% of world web traffic.

Google pulls the third cable under water. It will connect Europe and South Africa

As notes the CNET edition, by the end of June, 2019 Google participates in 14 projects on creation of submarine cables, and Equiano will become the third underwater line unrolled by the company without involvement of third-party investors. Two others are Curie (it is stretched from Los Angeles to Chile)  and  Dunan (from east part of the USA to France).^[1]

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