Google Launches Three New Submarine Cable Systems for Americas Connectivity
Google has announced the launch of the Americas Connectivity project, which includes the construction of three new submarine cable systems: Alisios, Canoa, and OlaLuz, as well as an additional branch line to the existing Firmina cable that connects directly to the Dominican Republic. This network will work alongside the previously established Curie, Nuvem, and Sol cables to create a redundant network covering the Americas.
The Alisios cable connects the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Chile, forming a loop in the Pacific that provides a redundant path from Chile to Panama and extends a third link from Panama to the U.S. West Coast, directly connecting to Google Cloud regions in Chile, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.
The Canoa cable connects the Dominican Republic to Bermuda and interconnects with the Nuvem and Sol systems, forming a loop in the Atlantic that provides high-reliability paths directly to North America and Europe for Latin America and the Caribbean, linking to Google regions in North Carolina, Virginia, and Madrid.
The OlaLuz cable connects directly from the Dominican Republic to Florida, enhancing capacity and resilience between the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast, intersecting with the Alisios and Firmina new branch line in the Dominican Republic, making the country a core node for three systems: Pacific, Caribbean, and Atlantic.
The new Firmina branch extends the existing high-capacity line connecting North America and South America to the Dominican Republic, further increasing network access points in the Caribbean and merging with Alisios and OlaLuz locally to form a transoceanic redundant loop.
From a market mechanism perspective, the project is primarily funded by Google’s own capital and is driven by the demand for cloud services and AI computing power, representing an event-driven infrastructure expansion. Capital is directed towards the construction of submarine fiber optics and landing stations, benefiting Google Cloud customers and businesses relying on low-latency cross-border data transmission, while traditional regional operators and smaller service providers that depend on single routing face pressure.
The governments of the Dominican Republic, Panama, Chile, and Bermuda have all expressed support, viewing it as a key node for enhancing their local digital hub status.
Source: Public Information
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Over the past decade, Google has continuously built its own submarine cables, including Firmina connecting the U.S. East Coast to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, Nuvem and Sol forming transatlantic redundancy, and Curie on the Pacific side, creating a private backbone from South America to North America and then to Europe, reducing reliance on traditional operators for leasing.
In terms of capital flow, Google is directly investing resources into its own fiber pairs and branch units, motivated by the need to match its cloud region expansion and the surge in AI training and inference traffic. By controlling the physical layer, it aims to achieve on-demand capacity expansion and path diversity, rather than waiting for consortium negotiations, directing resources from California and East Coast cloud regions to Chile and Caribbean hubs.
Similar cases can be seen with Microsoft and Meta's self-built cable layouts across the Pacific and Atlantic, as well as Amazon's participation in certain areas. Currently, Google is transitioning from point-to-point connections to comprehensive loop control across the Americas, with the Dominican Republic becoming a new hub.
This structural judgment indicates a reconstruction of the industry chain, where the mechanism allows hyperscale cloud vendors to shift pricing power from traditional telecom operators to themselves by owning submarine infrastructure, thereby establishing a moat in terms of traffic costs, latency, and resilience, pushing data transmission from a leasing model to vertical integration.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Whoever owns the submarine fiber optics owns the cross-border computing power pricing power.
Redundancy is not a cost, but an insurance leverage during traffic surges.
Hub countries gain digital premiums due to cable intersections, not due to population size.