Warta9.ccom – Google has again provided a surprise with its big project, this big project is a network of undersea cables that will cross several small countries in the world.
This news was announced directly by Googel’s parent company, Alphabet, announcing a giant project to build an internet network submarine cable. The plan is that this cable will pass through several small countries in the Pacific Ocean.
Reporting from Reuters, Tuesday (5/12/2023), there are plans to build a submarine cable from the United States across the Pacific Ocean to Australia via Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. This was revealed by US Government Officials.
The deal to build a submarine cable network will expand Google’s commercial submarine cable project to a region that includes countries such as Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plans to visit the White House to meet President Joe Biden. The governments of both countries will make financial contributions to Google’s submarine cable project.
The Australian government will contribute US$ 50 million, while the US will contribute US$ 15 million.
Countries in the middle of the Pacific Ocean have become a new focus for China and the United States.
The two countries that are fighting for influence are competing to approach the governments of Pacific countries to establish military partnerships and infrastructure development.
President Joe Biden also pushed for the United States to remain dominant in the field of telecommunications services. Control of the telecommunications industry is considered one of the key national security issues because it is related to controlling the flow of information to and from around the world.
Google is currently building a fiber optic cable that passes through Taiwan to connect the Philippines and the United States.
As part of the Pacific island countries’ telecommunications infrastructure project, the US will also work with local governments to build cybersecurity resilience including assisting with data backup to global cloud networks.
For information, apart from the project called South Pacific Connect, Google has also been involved in building many submarine cables in the Asian region that pass through Indonesian territory.
The Google submarine cable project that passes through Indonesian territory has been under construction since 2019, namely the Indigo West network. Then, Google also invested in the Echo submarine cable project which will operate in 2023 and the Apricot project which will operate in 2024.
“These announcements emphasize the importance of Indonesia as a high priority and strategic market for Google,” said a Google spokesperson.
Google stated that submarine cable networks have an impact on internet access costs and reliability, which then has an impact on economic development and productivity.
“Because of this, Google is investing in sea and land cable projects with telecommunications companies and other content providers, to connect our data centers to each other and to users,” said a Google spokesperson, as reported by cnnindonesia.(**)
