Google announces plans to build a new undersea network cable connecting the US, UK, and Spain, expected to be completed by 2022
Google has announced plans to build a new undersea network cable connecting the US, UK and Spain. — The tech giant says it is incorporating new technology into the cable …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Google's third private intercontinental cable push in two years. It followed Dunant, the transatlantic line to France announced in 2018 as its second self-built intercontinental cable after Curie to Chile, alongside a broader plan for three new undersea fiber routes and five new cloud regions.
The arc continued after this announcement: Firmina, running from the US to Brazil and Argentina by 2023, extended the program into South America, and the US-UK-Spain route itself later made landfall at Bude and Bilbao ahead of its planned 2022 activation.
First-order effects
- Google gains dedicated, privately controlled capacity across the Atlantic on a US-UK-Spain path, directly feeding the data traffic of its own services and its expanding cloud region footprint announced back in 2018.
Second-order effects
- Telecom carriers and consortium-backed cable operators face a competitor that builds routes for its own demand rather than to sell bandwidth, pressuring the traditional wholesale-capacity business model that funded most transatlantic routes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Curie, Dunant, this cable, then Firmina — subsea infrastructure ownership consolidates around a handful of cloud platforms whose traffic justifies private routes, leaving smaller operators dependent on capacity leased from their largest customers' rivals.
The trend: Hyperscale cloud providers are replacing consortium-funded telecom cables with privately owned intercontinental routes sized to their own traffic growth.