The North Atlantic will be getting another cable along the ocean floor, this time on a southerly path. Google says its latest transatlantic project, which it calls Sol, will connect Florida directly with Spain, with stops in Bermuda and the Azores. The new infrastructure will complement the Nuvem cable system, which should come online next year.
In northern Florida, Google will be working with DC BLOX to land Sol in Palm Coast, which sits to the south of Jacksonville and St. Augustine. The Palm Coast CLS will be a new facility, parallel to DC BLOX’s first such project in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where Nuvem will come ashore. If all goes well it should be ready for service in Q1 of 2027. Google will also put together a terrestrial route up to its South Carolina cloud region.
Meanwhile, on the other end the Sol cable will land at Santander with the help of Telxius. From Santander, which is along the coast to the west of Bilbao, the system will connect back to Madrid. Of course, Google and Telxius have worked together on a variety of systems, such as Dunant and Grace Hopper.
With completely new endpoints on both sides, Google is clearly looking for even more diversity across the Atlantic. I think the last time we had a direct connection in place between Florida and Spain was the Columbus III cable, which was decommissioned five years ago.
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Categories: Datacenter · Undersea cables
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