Google, via a blog written by Bikash Koley, vice president of Google Global Network, has revealed plans to deploy the Grace Hopper transatlantic submarine cable system. The submarine network will connect New York City with Bude, UK, and Bilbao, Spain. Deployment of the undersea system should be completed in 2022.
SubCom will deploy Grace Hopper, which will join Curie, Dunant, and Equiano on Google’s roster of private submarine cables. According to Koley, the new undersea cable will be linked to Equiano, which runs between Portugal and the west coast of Africa (see “Google plans Equiano submarine cable link from Portugal to South Africa”). The 16-fiber-pair undersea cable is the first Google investment in a private subsea cable to the UK as well as its first route to Spain of any kind. In an accompanying video, Koley states that the submarine cable will leverage optical fiber switching technology integrated in collaboration with Subcom to improve system reliability. This is the first use of the switching technology, according to Koley, who did not elaborate on its nature. The capacity of the system was not revealed.
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906–1992) was a computer science pioneer who helped develop one of the first linkers (compilers), a key element in the development of the COBOL programming language.
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