Google is seeking to increase its control on internet traffic with plans for three new subsea cables, one of which will stop off in Ireland.
The web giant has the world’s largest physical network, accounting for up to 25pc of worldwide internet traffic.
According to Google vice-president Ben Treynor Sloss, it has spent $30bn (€24.5bn) on cables and data centres in recent years. “These new investments expand our existing cloud network,” said Mr Treynor Sloss. “The Google network has over 100 points of presence and over 7,500 edge-caching nodes. This investment means faster and more reliable connectivity for all our users.”
The 6,000km Irish cable will connect the east coast of the US with a further connection to Denmark in the east. It is planned, Google says, to give the company more bandwidth across the Atlantic ocean.
“To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the US to Denmark and Ireland,” said Mr Treynor Sloss. “This cable is expected to come online by the end of 2019. The marine route survey, during which the supplier determines the specific route the cable will take, is already under way.”
The company is also planning other new subsea cables between the US and Chile and between Hong Kong and Guam.
“Simply put, it wouldn’t be possible to deliver products like Machine Learning Engine, Spanner, BigQuery and other Google Cloud Platform and G Suite services at the quality of service users expect without the Google network,” said Mr Treynor Sloss.
“Our cable systems provide the speed, capacity and reliability Google is known for worldwide, and at Google Cloud, our customers are able to make use of the same network infrastructure that powers Google’s own services.”
Google has two data centres in Ireland, but recently began looking at facilities in Denmark for the construction of a new data centre. Separately, Apple has still not indicated whether it will proceed with a proposed €850m data centre in Athenry.
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