A colossal submarine cable that will connect the east coast of the United States and Las Toninas, Argentina, with further landings in Brazil and Uruguay: this is Google’s latest project to provide users in South America with better low-latency access to the wallet of Google cloud and consumer services. The cable will be designed and installed by SubCom by the end of 2022 and operational from 2023.
The nice thing about the whole project is the name: “Firmina”, as the name of the Brazilian author and abolitionist Maria Firmina dos Reis. The closest Google data center in the region (and the only one in South America) is located near Santiago, Chile, connected to the west coast of the United States via Google’s Curie cable.
The new cable adds not only capacity, but also resilience to Google’s existing network. In particular, a technical feature that highlights the design, made up of 12 pairs of fibers, is the possibility for the cable to be powered from a single source, compared to traditional long submarine cables, which normally have to be powered at several points.
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