The Google/US Government Pacific Subsea Cable Power Play
The planned Bulikala cable connects Google's modular prefabricated Guam CLS to Fiji. The branch is right below Guam on the map at the bottom of this page. It is part of a large scale Google project costing a billion dollars to dramatically increase Pacific subsea throughput and resiliency via a web of island hopping fibre optic cables. These small islands such as Fiji, Christmas Island, the Marshalls, and Polynesia offer diverse network routing that is particularly valuable in case of a subsea cable segment goes dark. They also offer power, which is the gating factor for throughput over long distances. All power conductors lead to voltage drawdown which limits bandwidth. Boosting power at intermediate points will allow higher transmission rates and lead to better return on the capital invested. The overall plan is to connect Japan, Guam, Hawaii, many islands such as Fiji and French Polynesia to the US in such a way as to increase both throughput via power stops at small islands a...