Grace Hopper (submarine communications cable)

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Grace Hopper is a private transatlantic communications cable that will connect the United States Of America (New York) with the UK (Bude) and Spain (Bilbao). It was announced by Google in 2020 and is due to go live in 2022.[1]

History[]

In July 2020, Google announced that it would be investing in a new private subsea cable - Grace Hopper - its fourth after Curie, Dunant and Equiano; some of Google's other cable afiliations.[2] The Grace Hopper cable, which will link America with the UK and Spain was named after the American pioneering computer scientist Grace Brewster Murray Hopper, who was known for developing an early compiler that was important in the development of COBOL. Google said it was: "thrilled to honor Grace Hopper’s legacy of innovation by investing in the future of transatlantic communications with a state-of-the-art fiber optic cable".[3]

Google stated that the cable will provide better resilience for its network and marked its first investment in a private subsea cable route to the UK, and its first route to Spain. The cable, which is due to go live in 2022, will integrate the new Google Cloud region in Madrid more tightly into Google's global infrastructure.[4] Google's Jayne Stowell also has stated that another motivation for the investment is that many of the existing transatlantic cables are aging and need to be upgraded. “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,” she said.[5] Telecoms industry analysts have said that the main purpose of Google's subsea cable investments in cables such as Grace Hopper are twofold: to support and control quality of service and to reduce costs.[6]

Specifications[]

The Grace Hopper cable consists of 16 fiber pairs (32 fibers) of 22 Tbit/s each (352 Tbit/s total) and optical switching that will increase its reliability and also enable Google to more easily move traffic around during outages. This technology was developed in co-operation with SubCom, formerly a TE Connectivity company,[7] who will build the cable and which also worked with Google on the Dunant and Curie cables.[8]

The cable route will comprise a 6,250km stretch from New York to Widemouth Bay, Cornwall[9] and a 6,300km route between New York and Bilbao.[10]

Owing to works managed by Telxius,[11] the cable landed in Sopelana (near Bilbao) on 10th September 2021.[12] It later landed near GCHQ Bude on 14th September 2021, with the location chosen as it was "an ideal, nicely protected beach and adjacent to a lot of the terrestrial infrastructure needed".[13]

See also[]

  • Dark fibre
  • Submarine communications cable
  • Transatlantic communications cable

References[]

  1. ^ Frederic Lardinois (July 28, 2020). "Google is building a new private subsea cable between Europe and the US". TechCrunch.
  2. ^ Qiu, Winston (9 July 2019). "Complete List of Google's Subsea Cable Investments - Submarine Networks". www.submarinenetworks.com. Archived from the original on 14 August 2021.
  3. ^ Bikash Koley (July 28, 2020). "Announcing the Grace Hopper subsea cable, linking the U.S., U.K. and Spain". Google Cloud.
  4. ^ Natalie Bannerman (28 July 2020). "Google to build Grace Hopper subsea cable". Capacity Media.
  5. ^ Natalie Bannerman (28 August 2020). "Grace Hopper cable: Advancing the seas". Capacity Media.
  6. ^ Teresa Cottam. "Google Continues its Push To Become An Operator". Omnisperience.
  7. ^ "TE Connectivity completes the sale of its subsea communications business to Cerberus Capital Management". 5 November 2018.
  8. ^ Joe O’Halloran (28 July 2020). "Google Cloud announces Grace Hopper subsea cable". Computer Weekly.
  9. ^ Teresa Cottam (21 January 2021). "How a Cornish Seaside Resort Keeps Digital Britain Connected". Omnisperience.
  10. ^ "Grace Hopper". Submarine Cable Networks.
  11. ^ "Google culmina su cable submarino Grace Hopper en Bilbao: conecta EEUU con España". El Español. 10 September 2021.
  12. ^ "Grace Hopper: el cable submarino de Google llega a España". Expansión. 10 September 2021.
  13. ^ "'Massive' transatlantic data cable landed on beach in Bude". BBC News. 2021-09-14. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
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