Grace Hopper is a private

transatlantic communications cable A transatlantic telecommunications cable is a submarine communications cable connecting one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, each cable was a single wire. After mid-century, coaxial cable came into use ...

that will connect the United States of America (

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

) with the UK ( Bude) and Spain (

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). It was announced by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in 2020 and is due to go live in 2022.

History

In July 2020, Google announced that it would be investing in a new private subsea cable — Grace Hopper — its fourth private subsea cable after

Curie In computing, a CURIE (or ''Compact URI'') defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). It is an abbreviated URI expressed in a compact syntax, and may be found in both XML and non-XML grammars. A CURIE ...

(which was completed in 2019), Dunant and Equiano. The Grace Hopper cable, which will link America with the UK and Spain was named after the American pioneering computer scientist Grace Brewster Murray Hopper, who was known for developing an early compiler that was important in the development of

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

. 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". 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 Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

more tightly into Google's global infrastructure. 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. 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.

Specifications

The Grace Hopper cable consists of 16 fiber pairs (32 fibers) of 22 Tbit/s each (352 Tbit/s total) 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, formerly a TE Connectivity company, who will build the cable and which also worked with Google on the Dunant and Curie cables. The cable route will comprise a 6,250 km stretch from

Widemouth Bay Widemouth Bay ( kw, Porth an Men) is a bay, beach and small village on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England, UK. It is about 3 miles (5 km) south of Bude. This stretch of coast is steeped in the smuggling history of times before, and ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

and a 6,300 km route between New York and

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. Owing to works managed by

Telxius Telxius Telecom S.A. is a global telecommunications infrastructure company created in 2016, owned by Telefónica Infra, a subsidiary of Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica. History On February 21, 2017, Telefónica announced an agree ...

, the cable landed in Sopelana (near Bilbao) on 10 September 2021. It later landed near

GCHQ Bude GCHQ Bude, also known as GCHQ Composite Signals Organisation Station Morwenstow, abbreviated to GCHQ CSO Morwenstow, is a UK Government satellite ground station and eavesdropping centre located on the north Cornwall coast at Cleave Camp, betwee ...

on 14 September 2021, with the location chosen as it was "an ideal, nicely protected beach and adjacent to a lot of the terrestrial infrastructure needed".

References

{{Google LLC Transatlantic communications cables

History

Specifications

See also

References