16 ms·
Google officially launches Equiano subsea cable
- sirsinsalot 4y agoI wonder how long before they cut it without notice leaving anyone on the other end stranded.
- bombcar 4y ago$1 billion for an undersea cable that long seems almost ... cheap.
- missedthecue 4y agoI agree. UCLA is building 1 dorm building right now and it's estimated to cost $1.5 billion. Being a Californian real estate project it will no doubt have cost overruns.
- paxys 4y agoThis cable would undoubtedly have cost many times that amount had it run along the west coast of the USA rather than Africa. People always forget about currency conversion and purchasing power when having such discussions.
- systemvoltage 4y agoNo, it would cost more if it’s not in USD. XXXUSD rates have gone up by 20% for a lot of currencies this year.
- paxys 4y agoUnless you are paying the workers in USD that has no effect on the final price.
- systemvoltage 4y agoI was referring to the cost of the materials. If we are talking about labor, sure. Most of the cost I presume isn’t labor though. Materials are imported with a weakened currency.
- paxys 4y agoGoogle's cash reserves are in USD. Either they are purchasing the materials in USD (so no difference to them), or in the local currency (which works out better when USD is strong). So either way a strong dollar is good for them.
- fomine3 4y agoGoogle will receive less AD revenue in USD if ad market is primary competing by local ad clients.
- throwaway2037 4y agoYou wrote: <<Google's cash reserves are in USD.>> I tried to search for confirmation of this fact. I cannot find anything. Do you have a source? And, can anyone confirm if you can pay for Google services using non-USD? I assume yes. I cannot believe that Google is selling adverts in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and not accepting local currency. Also, Google has many, many employees overseas (ex-US), so they need lots of non-USD to pay local employees and expenses (office space, etc.).
- akmarinov 4y agoTo add to this, people would also likely forget that the US west coast is about 1/3 that of Africa’s, so it’ll get you only about as far as Nigeria. Africa is massive!
- bawolff 4y agoAre you using local talent to lay the cable? I would generally assume you use the same crew and same boats all the way through, who probably dont want to be paid in local currency.
- merely-unlikely 4y agoProbably not local talent/currency along the whole route. But if we are comparing to a project off the West Coast of the US where (I think) they'd be required to use a US flagged vessel and American crew, then it still should be far cheaper. And that's before environmental reviews, etc.
- zbrozek 4y agoIt would also not begin construction until 2044 when all the CEQA lawsuits are complete.
- est31 4y agoThere is a cable project currently ongoing for the east coast of the USA, called Confluence-1, to be finished in 2023. I wonder what their budget for that cable is. https://confluencenetworks.net/ https://confluencenetworks.net/
- bombcar 4y agoIf it is Atlassian Confluence-1 it will be way over budget and slow to boot.
- giantrobot 4y agoAn astounding 400Kbps supporting 3 concurrent users!
- cpursley 4y agoYou just won an internet, congratulations.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoFWIW the SEA-US cable occupies some prime beach town real estate in California and Hawaii and still only cost like $250m. I was looking at the cables that go along the west coast and the ones I checked were even cheaper than that, although they're old enough that inflation could be more of a factor
- Symbiote 4y agoI doubt it would be much different. This cable was (at least in parts, e.g. past Togo) laid by cable layer ship Teliri, registered in Italy. The company's map shows they've laid several cables in/to North America: http://www.elettratlc.it/works.php http://www.elettratlc.it/works.php
- tibbydudeza 4y agoIs that the one with no windows funded by a billionare ????.
- benburleson 4y agoNo, that's the Munger project at UCSB.
- aidenn0 4y agoWhich is estimated a $1.2B, fwiw.
- bogomipz 4y agoNo, that is in Santa Barbara. Same university system though, just two hours north.
- est31 4y agoIt is a highly automated process. It is also not as highly regulated as other construction projects, as the cable won't kill anybody. There are also no vested interests that want internet connectivity to remain bad in Africa.
- throwamon 4y agoWhat about impact on marine life? Genuine question.
- enviclash 4y agoI only have concerns about the coastal connection point being in an environmentally sensitive area, e.g. a wetland.
- odensc 4y agoNot to mention the impacts on the people who live in the communities on the coast that these cables often land at. See what has happened with Facebook's new cable in Oregon: https://oregoncoastalliance.org/facebook-proposes-undersea-cable-landing-in-tierra-del-mar/ https://oregoncoastalliance.org/facebook-proposes-undersea-c...
- jonas21 4y agoSorry, what were the impacts other than a few weeks of construction noise? The cable is buried under the beach and the seafloor until you get half a mile offshore. According to the link, they left some drilling equipment 60 feet underground, and that's a "disaster"? This site seems to be dedicated to opposing any sort of development along the Oregon coast, so I guess it's not surprising they didn't like this.
- Fomite 4y ago"...and at least 6,500 gallons of drilling fluid" feels considerably more significant than the "drill bit" in another comment.
- tomcam 4y agoAgreed. I would have guessed at least 10s of billions. Seems like at that price opening up a new backbone might pay for itself.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah at Google’s scale not paying for transit would eventually make it worthwhile (they probably peer most of it but someone is paying something).
- epivosism 4y agoLooks like it passes close to null island, 0 long, 0 lat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island aka
- perihelions 4y agoI think they should make it wind a loop around at that point and see which GIS apps crash.
- linuxlizard 4y agoYou joke, but I worked on a GPS app that would crash when crossing over the zero meridian. We didn't handle negative zero. The Degree/Minute/Second (DMS) near the meridian will be +/- 0 when degrees is zero. Signed zero is a thing.
- perihelions 4y agoI'm not sure if I was joking. It'd be a free unit test for everyone. I remember there was a fighter jet that crashed (*software* crash) trying to cross the other meridian in the Pacific, https://www.engadget.com/2007-02-27-f-22-raptors-systems-crash-mid-flight-over-pacific.html https://www.engadget.com/2007-02-27-f-22-raptors-systems-cra...
- colechristensen 4y agoOh man I’ve actually written unit tests for aircraft navigation in these circumstances before.
- Rygian 4y agoOne would think they had that kind of stuff figured out much before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969323
- yazan94 4y agoCan you elaborate some more please? This is blowing my mind right now, -0?
- sixhobbits 4y agoWhat does 'launch' mean when it comes to these cables. It is ready for use? Already has data flowing through?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tobyjsullivan 4y agoI'm speculating but that must mean data flowing through. If I understand correctly, capacity is leased to other tiers of the network. So "launched" would presumably mean that capacity is actively being sold and used now.
- skybrian 4y ago> The cable is scheduled to start carrying traffic at the beginning of 2023, says Paratus https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/07/africa/google-equiano-subsea-internet-cable-west-africa-spc-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/07/africa/google-equiano-subsea-...
- dexwiz 4y agoIn related news Google announced South Africa as the location for its first Cloud Region in Africa. Some arguments I saw against this in comments was possibly poor global connectivity. Also some commenters lamented that Nigeria would also be a good candidate for a region. This cable looks to address both of those points. https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/05/google-picks-south-africa-for-its-first-cloud-region-in-africa/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/05/google-picks-south-africa-...
- googlryas 4y agoThat helps with the West coast, but there are also huge population centers around Lake Victoria/Kenya/Ethiopia that won't have the benefit of a subsea cable? It's very confusing to me. South Africa is really far out of the way. I guess a 2000 mile round trip from Lagos isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and maybe Kenyans have better connectivity with a data center in the ME or India.
- _visgean 4y agoI think its mostly commercial? If you look at the map of gdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#/media/File:African_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_in_2017.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_G... it makes sense to put the cable this way.. Or even better: https://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=118&r=af&t=10&l=en https://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=118&r=af&t=10&l=en, most users are in SA and NG...
- vitus 4y agoPerhaps the "obvious" answer: that's where their competition is. Azure (Johannesburg) and AWS (Cape Town) both have regions in South Africa. Google does have some presence on both the western / eastern coasts (Nigeria / Kenya) but in general it's tough to be in many other places when there's not really good connectivity. New fibers will help, of course. (blah blah google employee disclaimer)
- ajross 4y agoSeems like east Africa would be better served by overland fiber, no? It's a comparatively straight shot to Israel or Dubai, both of which are well served by existing networks.
- kungito 4y ago
- bombcar 4y agoJokes aside there’s always someone willing to buy undersea cable.
- pacetherace 4y agokilledbygoogle.com says hi
- FeistySkink 4y agoEquiano is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great content to the platform and Equiano Pro. Let us know if you have other questions.
- annadane 4y agoGoogle has a lot of failures of their own but they seem at least semi-committed to an open internet (with actual ethical standards), something I can't exactly say for Zuckerberg
- ajvs 4y agoOpen internet? With all their walled gardens and filter bubbles the idea is pretty laughable from Google.
- asah 4y agomeh, Google is "more open" than others e.g. Apple and even when they're forced to weird a stick, they do it reluctantly. Instead, like the US government, Google have developed mastery of "soft power" making it statistically-rare that they conduct Putin-like tactics. They know that heavyhanded tactics force heavyhanded responses and are actually a sign of weakness, not strength. To be fair, if their business model came under _material_ pressure to be locked down, I'm not convinced they'd stay open. As an example, look at Chrome vs adblockers - they could've shut them down years ago, but only acted when adblockers ate materially into the business and they were forced, again recognizing that they'll lose some users to Firefox and Brave.
- _emacsomancer_ 4y agoI've seen arguments that Google's incentives simply align better with an open web than do those of many other big tech players, e. g. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1421141091080818688.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1421141091080818688.html
- saagarjha 4y agoN.B. The author of that thread is a longtime Chrome contributor.
- scarface74 4y agoHow is Google “more open”? Surely you don’t mean because of Android? https://www.engadget.com/2018-07-18-eu-commission-google-record-fine.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-07-18-eu-commission-google-rec... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
- yrgulation 4y agoAny news of contributions to africa’s development make me happy. I dont know how to describe the feeling. I see the continent as a hidden gem. I am saddened that europe didnt take such initiative and doesnt promote more substantial investment. It’s literarily right next from us.
- _visgean 4y agoeu has 150b investment package for africa https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/stronger-europe-world/global-gateway/eu-africa-global-gateway-investment-package_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/stro... > The Investment Package will facilitate projects in submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cables, as well as cloud and data infrastructures. It will also support regulatory frameworks promoting a digital transition that put people at the centre and the principles of trusted connectivity, such as data protection. > According to a brief (and somewhat detail-thin) explainer that the EU put out, the Global Gateway Investment Package will focus on infrastructure that can facilitate trade and mobility. Also included is a EurAfrica Gateway Cable – an under-sea fibre optic network that will connect sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Europe. Another focus is electrification – 600m Africans still lack access to electricity. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/cas/news-events/news/details/europe-promises-to-mobilise-up-to-usd170bn-in-africa https://www.ntu.edu.sg/cas/news-events/news/details/europe-p... we are building cables. But also eletricity.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoSo the question for GP would be: we’re they not aware of this investment package? Or were they aware of it and take it for granted? Or were they aware of it but consider it not enough?
- yrgulation 4y agoGood question - i had no clue!
- Bayart 4y agoWe're not good at propaganda.
- jtchang 4y agoI like to ask non-techies how they imagine their text messages go from the US to Europe. Most people think it is some form of wireless communication like satellite or cellular. They are quite surprised when they realize that it is just one really long string over the Atlantic.
- jcq3 4y agoWell they are partly right as phone uses satellite communication with 4G to communicate with telecom backbone
- aetherspawn 4y agoNone of the following technologies: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, currently use satellites between the consumers' phone and the internet backbone.
- albrewer 4y agoIn very rural areas, cell phone towers use microwave repeaters to get to a hub station that has a hard line connection to the backbone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- moss2 4y agounder the Atlantic* ;)
- subsubzero 4y agoFuture timeline of this project: September 12th 2023 - Google undersea fiber team is asked to find other opportunities at the company. October 23rd 2023 - Google twitter account comments that the undersea cable to South Africa project will not be shut down. November 12th 2023 - Google undersea cable project to SA officially shut down. /s
- scarface74 4y agoHopefully Google buried the cables deep enough this time https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/google-fiber-exits-louisville-after-shoddy-installs-left-exposed-wires-in-roads/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/googl...
- smadge 4y agoGoogle has been building undersea cables for 14 years.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y agoLet's start a bet. How long do you think it will take Google to shut it down?
- oittaa 4y agoI'll take that bet. I think the cable will be use in 5 years from now unless there's a large asteroid impact, nuclear war, or other major catastrophe. Any sum between $1k and $1M should be fine for me. You can choose any reputable betting site as the broker.
- aantix 4y agoTIL the tightness of the cable affects latency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_c... >This advantage only increases over time, as tighter cables provide higher bandwidth – the 2012 generation of cables drop >the transatlantic latency to under 60 milliseconds, according to Hibernia Atlantic, deploying such a cable that year.[ Are they able to achieve a direct, straight-line path between the two endpoints over thousands of miles?
- XorNot 4y agoYou never get that with fiber optics to start with - total internal reflection implies the light is traveling a fairly complicated geometry anyway. To do a straight line path it wouldn't be a fiber cable, it would be a tube which you'd have to pressurize and then do a fair bit of work to try and keep from flexing out of alignment (although 3 reflections as opposed to hundreds of thousands probably helps).
- uhuruity 4y agoAs someone who grew up in East Africa and remembers the days when there wasn't a single submarine cable connecting my country to the rest of the world. I'm happy for West Africa but hope that the East gets some more love soon too :)
- TulliusCicero 4y agoAre there cables that go through the Suez canal? Or is it not worth it to go undersea there?
- adolph 4y agoAll subsea cable threads need a link to: Mother Earth Mother Board The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Earth_Mother_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Earth_Mother_Board https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242682
- fetzu 4y agoI wish I could find/read a version of this amazing piece with the photographs !
- balderdash 4y agoWhat are the economics of such a cable? Who are the customers? What do they pay and how are the contracts structured?
- stingraycharles 4y agoI was also curious about this: they mention a few times that it’s a privately owned cable, does that also imply it will be used privately (eg only Google services), or will other ISPs be able to rent capacity on it?
- sudhirj 4y agoMost cables are privately owned, as is most of the internet actually. The telcos juts interface with each other and sell each other bandwidth on their cables. That said, Google will likely reserve some portion of the cable for their inter-datacenter use. That’s how you get fast cross region data transfer in GCP. Same for AWS and Azure, all have some capacity reserved for data between their datacenters.
- Bayart 4y agoTransit is sold in bulk and peered at exchange points. There are SLAs, different rates etc. It's not much different from other kinds of resources, but I don't think it's nearly as automatized as it should be.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> and the islands of Saint Helena Why? How can that possibly be profitable?
- kcb 4y ago"In Brussels the following year, SHG UK Representative, Kedell Worboys, along with Director for Latin America & Caribbean, Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, Jolita Butkeviciene, signed a Financing Agreement for the Territorial Allocation of the 11th European Development Fund (EDF 11). As a result, €21.5 million was allocated to St Helena to support the delivery of the SHG Digital Strategy through the realisation of the submarine cable to enable faster and more reliable internet connectivity on the Island.[154]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena#Telecommunications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena#Telecommunication...
- bruce511 4y agoA branch from the cable to the island is relatively cheap. And although the population of the island is only around 5000, the human return on this investment is huge. In simple economic terms it allows Saints (as they are known) to participate in the global digital economy. Both as providers (everything from programmers to call centres) to consumers (basic things like voice,meetings,streaming etc.) St Helena now has an airport so with connectivity, tourism also improves. Its a lot easier to take a week to visit a truly exotic location if connectivity is also good. Currently the islands share a small satillite connection, which is very expensive, and very slow. In summary, the provision of good connectivity in rural areas helps stem the flood to ever larger urban areas, and allows remote communities to both preserve themselves but also participate directly in a global economy.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThe airport you mention is also the most expensive airport in the world, by some measures, and the construction of which was a complete fiasco. So I’m not sure what to make of your other comments. Anyway thanks for the reply.
- shmerl 4y agoWhat does it mean exactly? Is it Google's private cable or it serves general backbone Internet traffic?
- returnInfinity 4y agoLooks like both
- kaapipo 4y agoSo huh, how many years before they're going to sunset it? :P
- neals 4y agoI'm not going to be using this cable, just for Google to cancel it at some point in the near future.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoI work at Google and wish this joke was less accurate.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoI am not sure why you are being down voted. I think that the joke was not really understood. https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com
- amelius 4y agoThe one you are using right now might be canceled by a Russian sub.
- 4gotunameagain 4y agos/Russian/American/g
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoFor a company with such a competitive moat in global internet bandwidth, i often wonder why they simply don't undercut AWS and Azure on their egress fees and thus cloud bills? Free unlimited egress would completely change cloud economics. It's going to happen anyway, either wait to be disrupted by the likes of Cloudflare or do it now and disrupt the industry.
- kedihacker 4y agoIf they distrupted by something they can just make it free while keeping it high benefits lock in to gcp.
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoCancelling this project in 5 years is going to be a b*tch
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jarek83 4y agoSuch a brilliant project and imagine that some substantial part of its bandwidth will be taken to serve ads.
- jstummbillig 4y agoIt does seem a little wasteful to repeatedly transfer something as asynchronous as ads around half the globe when you could just store and serve them from a local data center.
- jarek83 4y agoOh yes, ads waste a lot of resources. But if they tend to be 'tailored to user' then the collected data has to call home first and then choice of ads gets transferred to probably already closed browser tab.
- THENATHE 4y agoWho’s bright idea was it to give the Nigerian princes gigabit?
- pulse7 4y agoThere most be now many cables above other cables when you consider cable crossings in the ocean...
- cft 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano
- ksec 4y agoI often struggle to think of something decent from Google. May be when Gmail was spam free and Google Search was fast and accurate. But those didn't last long. If there is one thing I could commend Google, it would be their Datacenter infrastructure and Subsea Cable investment.
- JoachimS 4y agoSo... how long will it be operational before sent to the Google Graveyard?
- zython 4y ago3-18 months from now: Google digs up Equiano subsea cable again and cuts it in half.
- EGreg 4y agoIf this cable is ever attacked, we know it had to be Russia.
- cloudmatthevv 4y agoThis is so cool! 1.6 million jobs in Africa (if that's where people will be hired!) are really needed.
- lloydatkinson 4y agoThis one will be harder for Google to kill off but I’m sure someone that pushed for this will use it for a promotion and then it will be half forgotten about.