MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Google to lay submarine cable between Chile and Australia

The Humboldt cable will join other infrastructure projects, Google Cloud's Quigley said

Tech giants Google plan to link Chile with Australia and French Polynesia through the Humboldt cable, which would become first direct submarine link between South America and Oceania, thus expanding the digital infrastructure of the South Pacific.

This joint effort would also materialize a goal set by the Chilean government back in 2016 to provide a fiber optic connection that will strengthen the network infrastructure in the region and promote technological and economic development.

Submarine cables improve the connection between different countries, which favors the growth of the economy, increasing a country's wealth and the number of available jobs, it was explained.

According to Analysys Mason, the cables that Google has previously installed under the sea in Latin America and the Caribbean could help create 740,000 new jobs by 2027.

The Humboldt cable will be integrated with the South Pacific Connect initiative, and enable additional investments in geographic diversification of routes linking French Polynesia to Chile.

“Humboldt will join other infrastructure projects, including the Google data center in Quilicura to power Google services, the Google Cloud region in Santiago supporting customers across Latin America, terrestrial connectivity across the Andes between Chile and Argentina, and the Curie submarine cable linking Chile, Panama and the west coast of the United States,” Google Cloud Vice President of Global Network Infrastructure Brian Quigley said.

The Humboldt cable is named after Alexander von Humboldt, a German scholar, geographer, naturalist and explorer who traveled extensively in the Americas in the early 19th century. The name was chosen through social media voting by Chilean residents.