Google to lay the first undersea fiber optic cable to connect Africa and Australia
After large-scale Internet outages across Africa caused by malfunctioning submarine cables, Google’s decision proves its relevance.
The new cable, called “Umoja,” starts in Kenya and passes through various countries, ending its land journey in South Africa, home to Google’s first African data center, which started operating in Johannesburg earlier this year, TechCrunch reports.
The ground part of the route is actually already completed, and Google has been working with Liquid Intelligent Technologies. Work is currently underway to lay the cable across the Indian Ocean to Perth, Australia, but there is no confirmed timeline for its completion.
Hundreds of cables have been laid across the world’s seas, oceans, and waterways, and major tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are claiming an increasing share of the infrastructure. The reason is simple: the more cables and data centers there are, the better quality of service they can provide to their customers, whether it’s lower-latency YouTube streams or faster data transfers for cloud-based businesses.
Currently, the closest submarine cable route to Google’s planned route for Umoja is SUB.CO’s Oman Australia Cable (OAC), which opened in 2012 and connects Oman to Perth. Google itself has also already invested in various cable projects centered around Africa, including Equiano, which connects Portugal with Nigeria and South Africa.
Although Google did not specify a specific timeframe for the completion of Umoja, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that a typical submarine cable construction takes about three years from planning to commissioning. Thus, we can expect this cable to be ready by about 2026.
As a reminder, the EU intends to lay an undersea internet cable across the Black Sea to improve communication with Georgia and reduce dependence on communication infrastructure that runs through Russia.
