Google’s Grace Hopper Subsea Cable System Arrives To The UK

17/09/2021

While it is said that the internet runs in the cloud, the fact is, it runs underwater.

Or to be exact, under the sea and continents.

And this time, a year after being officially announced, Google’s Grace Hopper undersea cable has officially arrived in the UK, in "an ideal, nicely protected beach and adjacent to a lot of the terrestrial infrastructure needed".

The cable that is named after the computer science pioneer, the Grace Hopper cable spans all the way from New York City in the U.S., to Bude, Cornwall, the UK.

This cable is one the biggest upgrades to Google's network, and is the first Google-funded undersea cable that crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Arriving the the British shores, the journey of this cable hits 50%. It's next destination, is Bilbao in Spain.

Google cable Grace Hopper

The cable system is designed to “improve the resilience” of the Google network used by “consumer and enterprise products”.

Google has targeted 2022 for completion of the Bilbao cable to provide tighter “integration with the upcoming Google Cloud region in Madrid.”

"We need to be able to proactively manage the capacity availability, quality, latency, routing, technology and scalability of our network to provide constant, uninterruptible and high quality of network to Google services like Meet, Gmail and Google Cloud,” said Google's Jayne Stowell.

Analysts said that the Grace Hopper cable system allows Google to better control the quality of its services, as well as reducing costs.

This should also allow Google to “add a layer of security beyond what’s available over the public internet.”

The cable system consists of a 16 fiber pairs that is 22 Tbit/s each (352 Tbit/s total). It allows optical switching that can increase its reliability, and also enable Google to more easily move traffic around during outages.

This technology was developed by Google, with the help of SubCom, formerly a TE Connectivity company.

Stretching from New York to the Bude, and then Madrid, the cable is 6,300 kilometers long.

First announced by Google in 2020, the Grace Hopper private transatlantic communication cable is the company's fourth after Curie (U.S. to Chile and Panama), Dunant (U.S. to France), and Equiano (Portugal to South America).

Read: Google Dunant Intercontinental Undersea Cable Goes Live With Speed Up To 250 Tbit/S

Google cable Grace Hopper