Google announces latest subsea cable investment

Google on Tuesday announced its latest subsea cable investment, the Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable system. The system forms a ring between the key markets of Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore, building on Google's previous APAC cable systems.

As data usage grows across the Asia-Pacific region, Google has continued to invest in submarine cables there, including the Indigo, FASTER and PLCN cables.

The investments, Google wrote in a blog post, "will give GCP users access to scalable, diverse capacity on the lowest latency routes." Specifically, Google's cable systems are intended to improve connectivity to the Google Cloud Platform's five cloud regions across Asia and Australia.

The JGA cable system will have two fiber pairs connecting Japan to Guam, as well as two fiber pairs connecting Guam to Sydney. RTI-C is developing the JGA-North segment, while a consortium of AARnet, Google, and RTI-C is developing the JGA-South segment. Together, they'll span nearly 6,000 miles. NEC Corporation and Alcatel Submarine Networks are co-building the new system.