Subsea Cables from Google Coming to Guam
By Nestor Licanto, KUAM News
January 18, 2024
One of the world's most dominant companies – Google – will be landing two new sub sea cables on Guam. A top company executive made the major announcement alongside Governor Lou Leon Guerrero in a press conference from Washington today.
More than 90 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through subsea cables. Google has a leading role in building the capacity. Guam plays a part in landing those cables, which in turn will help bridge the digital divide throughout the Pacific.
Google vice president of global networks Brian Quigley announced the construction of two new undersea cables from Guam to Fiji and to French Polynesia. He announced, “This is a large global investment, certainly not just Google, and the government partnerships with not just Guam, but the United States and Australia.”
“Guam's geographical presence and long history as a digital hub are critical for its foundation as a node for this initiative,” Quigley added.
For Guam, the cables are expected to greatly increase Internet connectivity speeds, and reduce latency. And Governor Leon Guerrero says that should also translate into in a number of other benefits, as she said, “There's going to be a lot of economic, I think, investment going forward, knowing that Guam's going to be a place that will have this quick rapid Internet information system. I also do know that it will also create jobs, and these would be high professional paying jobs.”
“We will see more of our people going into coding, programming and so forth, which I think again just gives them a better income wage level and capacity.”
Google's Quigley says there are more than 500 subsea cables that provide critical connectivity throughout the globe. He suggests the more, the better, as diversity is a key to ensuring that the vital access is preserved. “It's not just about connecting Guam to the U.S., or Guam onward to Taiwan and the Philippines – if we can then connect Guam to Fiji and Fiji has an alternate path to the U.S., so if the Guam cable gets cut it can route down to Fiji and throughout, so we model and plan our network based on a statistical likelihood of outages, which includes things such as hundred-year events and weather factors we haven't thought of.”
