Google and Facebook’s new cable to link Japan and South-east Asia

Did you know that 98% of international internet traffic is ferried around the world by subsea cables? As the ways that we work, play and connect become increasingly digital, reliable connectivity is more important than ever before.

Today, we are announcing Apricot, a new subsea cable that will connect Singapore, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia. It is expected to be ready for service in 2024.

Earlier this year, we also announced the Echo subsea cable, which will connect the U.S., Singapore, Guam and Indonesia.

The Echo and Apricot cables are complementary submarine systems that will offer benefits with multiple paths in and out of Asia, including unique routes through southern Asia, ensuring a significantly higher degree of resilience for Google Cloud and digital services.

Together they’ll provide businesses and startups in Asia with lower latency, more bandwidth, and increased resilience in their connectivity between Southeast Asia, North Asia and the United States.

Network investments like these have had a measurable impact on regional economic activity.

For example, Analysys Mason conducted a study of Google’s APAC network infrastructure between 2010 and 2019, and found that network investments led to an extra $430 billion (USD) in aggregate GDP and 1.1 million additional jobs for the APAC region.

Number of additional jobs supported through the increase in GDP attributable to Google’s network infrastructure investments [Source: Analysys Mason, 2020]

Apricot joins Google’s global network of subsea cables, including Curie, Dunant, Equiano, Firmina and Grace Hopper, and consortium cables like JGA, INDIGO and Havfrue.

In total, we have investments in 18 subsea cables, alongside our 27 cloud regions and 82 zones around the world.
CT Bureau