New subsea cable project aims to stabilize internet connections in South Pacific

When an underwater volcanic eruption severed a key internet conduit in 2022, the island nation of Tonga lost most of its connection to the outside world for more than a month.  Thanks to a new subsea cable project Google unveiled on January 17, South Pacific islanders are less likely to be cut off from the global internet in the future. The two planned fiber-optic lines, dubbed Bulikula and Halaihai by project organizers, will directly link the US territory of Guam with the island nations of Fiji and French Polynesia. The pair of cables join a growing network of underwater infrastructure that enables information to crisscross the globe. Without direct physical connections to the global internet, the exchange of data can slow down to a trickle, depending on weather and other conditions that can impede the only other alternative: satellite internet. According to Brian Quigley, VP of global network infrastructure at Google Cloud, the two new cables should be completed by late 2026, with branching cables connecting other South Pacific islands over the following two years.