Google plans to build three new undersea fiber optic cables and add five new cloud regions in Montreal, Netherlands, Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong
At Google, we've spent $30 billion improving our infrastructure over three years, and we're not done yet.
Context & Ripple Effects
This January 2018 announcement is the hinge point in Google's move from renting network capacity to owning it. Before it, Google's flagship subsea project was a shared bet — the LA–Hong Kong cable built with Facebook and Pacific Light Cable Network. After it, the cadence turns proprietary: Dunant to France, its second wholly owned intercontinental cable after Curie to Chile, then Firmina to South America, JGA to Australia, and by 2024 a $1B Pacific islands connectivity program.
The five new cloud regions — Montreal, Netherlands, Los Angeles, Finland, Hong Kong — are the demand side of that buildout: each region needs low-latency routes back to Google's core network, and the $30 billion already spent over three years signals the capex is deliberate, not opportunistic.
First-order effects
- Enterprises in Montreal, the Netherlands, Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong get local Google Cloud data residency and latency, directly expanding the footprint AWS and Microsoft Azure must match region-for-region.
- Google's own traffic between these regions shifts onto cable routes it controls rather than leased carrier capacity, starting with the transatlantic and Asia-Pacific lanes named here.
Second-order effects
- Rival hyperscalers face pressure to fund their own private cables — the consortium model Google used on the LA–Hong Kong project gives way to sole-owner builds like Dunant and Firmina as the competitive template.
- Telecom carriers and cable consortia lose pricing leverage on premium transoceanic routes as the largest cloud customers become their own suppliers of long-haul bandwidth.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and the 2024 Pacific investment suggests it does — the internet's physical layer consolidates around a handful of hyperscalers who own compute, regions, and subsea routes end to end, turning submarine cable ownership from a telecom business into an extension of cloud capex.
The trend: Cloud providers are vertically integrating downward into the physical network layer, converting subsea cables and edge regions from purchased services into owned strategic assets.