Hola, South America! Announcing the Firmina subsea cable

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Single-end power source capability is important for reliability, a key priority for Google’s network. With submarine cables, data travels as pulses of light inside the cable’s optical fibers. That light signal is amplified every 100 km with a high-voltage electrical current supplied at landing stations in each country. While shorter cable systems can enjoy the higher availability of power feeding from a single end, longer cables with large fiber-pair counts make this harder to do. Firmina breaks this barrier–connecting North to South America, the cable will be the longest ever to feature single-end power feeding capability. Achieving this record-breaking, highly-resilient design is accomplished by supplying the cable with a voltage 20% higher than with previous systems.

Celebrating the world’s visionaries

We sought to honor a luminary who worked to advance human understanding and social justice. The cable is named after Maria Firmina dos Reis (1825 – 1917), a Brazilian abolitionist and author whose 1859 novel, Ursula, depicted life for Afro-Brazilians under slavery. A mixed-race woman and intellectual, Firmina is considered Brazil’s first novelist. With this cable, we’re thrilled to draw attention to her pioneering work and spirit. You can learn more about Firmina in this Google Doodle.

Including Firmina, we now have investments in 16 subsea cables, such as Dunant, Equiano and Grace Hopper, and consortium cables like Echo, JGA, INDIGO, and Havfrue. We’re continuing our work of building out a robust global network and infrastructure, which includes Google data centers and Google Cloud regions around the world.

Learn more about our infrastructure.

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