Google and Facebook have unveiled plans for two new undersea cables linking North America and the Asia-Pacific region.
Facebook said the new undersea cables known as Echo and Bifrost will provide vital new connections between the Asia-Pacific region and North America, delivering much-needed internet capacity, redundancy, and reliability.
Google on Monday announced its investment in Echo that will run from Eureka, California to Singapore, with a stop-over in Guam, with plans to also land in Indonesia. Echo will be the first-ever cable to directly connect the U.S. to Singapore with direct fiber pairs over an express route. It will decrease latency for users connecting to applications running the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) regions in the area, home to some of the world’s most vibrant financial and technology centers.
Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for reliable internet access. The internet has enabled people around the world to remain connected while apart, continue their education, take care of their health, and be productively employed. In the Asia-Pacific region in particular, the demand for 4G, 5G, and broadband access is rapidly increasing.
Echo and Bifrost will support further growth for hundreds of millions of people and millions of businesses, said Facebook.