The cables will link Guam with Fiji and French Polynesia.
When an underwater volcanic eruption severed a key internet conduit in 2022, the island nation of Tonga lost most of its connection to the outside world for more than a month.
Thanks to a new subsea cable project Google unveiled on Jan. 17, South Pacific islanders are less likely to be cut off from the global internet in the future.
The two planned fiber-optic lines, dubbed Bulikula and Halaihai by project organizers, will directly link the US territory of Guam with the island nations of Fiji and French Polynesia. According to Google, one of the main organizers, the cables will create a “ring” of core connectivity in the region, setting the stage for even more islands to eventually receive direct internet access.
“Google laying down these basic infrastructure trunks is going to give a lot of opportunity and access to those little islands that can jump onto this,” Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said at an event announcing the project.
The pair of cables join a growing network of underwater infrastructure that enables information to crisscross the globe. Without direct physical connections to the global internet, the exchange of data can slow down to a trickle, depending on weather and other conditions that can impede the only other alternative: satellite internet. (In Tonga’s case, the islands relied on Starlink satellite service while the undersea cable was being repaired.)
Brian Quigley, VP of global network infrastructure at Google Cloud, said that satellite is a good solution for basic connectivity, but the medium isn’t capable of handling the amount of internet traffic that typically needs to flow through the islands.
“Where you have satellite broadband…it is very helpful in connecting the digital divide, but it has a fundamental difference in performance than direct fiber-optic connectivity. So we think they’re both complementary and have their place,” he said in an interview.
According to Quigley, the two new cables should be completed by late 2026, with branching cables connecting other South Pacific islands over the following two years.
Guerrero said that the enhanced data capacity the cable provides will let islanders to take greater advantage of telemedicine, particularly when transmitting large medical files like radiological results. The network will also enable more stable video calls, allowing government leaders to communicate remotely instead of flying between islands, she said.
Another side effect? Encouraging the Guam tech sector to flourish.
The island’s status as an English-speaking US territory already makes it attractive to many businesses, Guerrero noted, and the University of Guam is expanding its computer science, engineering, and data-science curricula. Strengthening the region’s internet infrastructure only further positions Guam as a tech hub, she said.
“We would see higher-paying jobs and much more professional jobs going to our local people,” Guerrero said.
Texting a friend who lives overseas. Researching travel plans for your next vacation. Joining a Zoom call with an international colleague. It’s easy to take these everyday internet uses for granted when the exchange of information across continents happens so quickly.
But the hidden infrastructure that enables all of this might surprise you: subsea cables that crisscross the ocean’s floor, transporting hundreds of terabytes of data per second. The industry is the “best-kept secret ever” because it’s “fairly invisible,” Nigel Bayliff, senior director of global submarine networks at Google, said.
These underwater pipes don’t look impressive at first glance—some are no bigger than a household garden hose—but they hold the global internet together.
“In some ways, the factories of today’s era are data centers, and fiber-optic subsea cables are the railroads that connect them together,” Brian Quigley, Google’s VP of global network infrastructure, said at a Jan. 17 event announcing a project to run such cables linking Guam with the islands of Fiji and French Polynesia.
At the very heart of the cable, there are typically 16 slim fiber-optic strands that actually transmit the data, surrounded by a layer of copper armoring to protect and stabilize the strands. This core is then encased in a polyethylene jacket.
This lightweight cable—about the circumference of your thumb—runs through the deepest parts of the ocean, where it’s unlikely to be disturbed by activities like boat anchoring and fishing operations. As the cable travels into shallower water that sees more traffic, it’s armored with additional casings that can reach about two inches in diameter. Even as the cable grows in size, its precious cargo—data, and the fiber optics that carry it—remains the same.
Data’s submarine journey
A subsea cable starts its journey at an information and communications technology center, and continues to a landing station, where the cable physically leaves the shore and tunnels into the sea.
When laying a new cable, a ship with thousands of miles of cable coiled in its bowels begins a slow journey, feeding the cable off the back of the ship much like unfurling a coil of rope. The ship is outfitted with a plow that creates a trough in the bed of the ocean for the cable, and the underwater currents eventually bury it in the sand. The cable periodically runs through housings made out of alloy that can survive on the seabed for roughly 25 years, amplifying the data on its journey.
Amazingly, the method for laying subsea cables hasn’t changed since the advent of the telegraph: It’s just the amount of data the cables can carry and the speed of transmission that have evolved.
The results
With a network of roughly 500 subsea cables that traverse the globe, everyone from data centers down to everyday web users can enjoy more stable and reliable internet access.
“We have those multiple routes to connect people. Our goal…is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible,” Bayliff said.