Google said it has contracted Alcatel Submarine Networks to build a new submarine cable that will connect Cape Town in South Africa with Lisbon in Portugal in the first phase of a planned roll-out. Known as Equiano, the Google cable is expected to be ready for service by 2021 and will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fibre-pair level rather than traditional wavelength-level switching.
The cable will have branching units along the way that can be used to extend connectivity to additional African countries. The first branch is expected to land in Nigeria. The Equiano cable is based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology. It will offer approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region.
Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fibre-pair level, rather than using the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching. This greatly simplifies the allocation of cable capacity, giving Google the flexibility to add and reallocate it in different locations as needed.
