Grace Hopper (submarine communications cable)

Grace Hopper is a private transatlantic communications cable that will connect the United States (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. The Grace Hooper cable, which will link the US with the UK and Spain was named after 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".[2]

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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]

The Grace Hopper cable will be have 16 fiber pairs (32 fibers) 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, a TE Connectivity company, who will build the cable and which also worked with Google on the Dunant and Curie cables.[6]

The cable route will comprise a 6,250km stretch from New York to Widemouth Bay, Cornwall[7] and a 6,300km route between New York and Bilbao.[8]

See also

References
  1. Frederic Lardinois (July 28, 2020). "Google is building a new private subsea cable between Europe and the US". TechCrunch.
  2. Bikash Koley (July 28, 2020). "Announcing the Grace Hopper subsea cable, linking the U.S., U.K. and Spain". Google Cloud.
  3. Natalie Bannerman (28 July 2020). "Google to build Grace Hopper subsea cable". Capacity Media.
  4. Natalie Bannerman (28 August 2020). "Grace Hopper cable: Advancing the seas". Capacity Media.
  5. Teresa Cottam. "Google Continues its Push To Become An Operator". Omnisperience.
  6. Joe O’Halloran (28 July 2020). "Google Cloud announces Grace Hopper subsea cable". Computer Weekly.
  7. Teresa Cottam (21 January 2021). "How a Cornish Seaside Resort Keeps Digital Britain Connected". Omnisperience.
  8. "Grace Hopper". Submarine Cable Networks.
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