Google’s Indigo Undersea Cable Connecting Southeast Asia Now Live
By Abner Li, 9t05Google
May 29, 2019
By Abner Li, 9t05GoogleOver the past several years, Google Cloud has rapidly expanded its global infrastructure with new Cloud regions for enterprise customers and undersea fiber cables. The company announced today that the INDIGO undersea cable connecting Australia and Singapore is now live.
INDIGO was announced in April 2017 to connect Sydney, Perth, Jakarta, and Singapore. For Google, the new system serves traffic between Australia and Southeast Asia with a branch in Indonesia. End users and Google Cloud customers should expect faster and more reliable service as a result of the added capacity.
The cable constructed by Alcatel Submarine Networks spans 9,200 kilometers with two fiber pairs providing a total design capacity of 36 terabits per second. In addition to Google, it was funded by a consortium that includes AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners, and Telstra.
It joins Google’s Cloud regions in Sydney and Singapore, with Jakarta coming online by mid-2020. Meanwhile, in Q1 2020, the JGA consortium cable connecting Japan, Guam, and Australia with 7,080 kilometers of undersea fiber optic cable system will be ready.
Elsewhere, Google’s private Curie cable between the United States and Chile is expected to go live later this year. Dunant — another non-consortium connecting the U.S. and France — will come online in Q3 2020. Despite the trend towards private systems, the company will continue to join consortiums and lease capacity on existing cables.
