Alphabet

Google’s Bosun subsea cable to link Darwin, Australia to Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean

Posted on by Alan Weissberger
Alphabet’s Google will build a subsea cable connecting Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.  Christmas Island is 1,500 km (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 km (215 miles) from Jakarta. Other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications infrastructure provider Vocus, and SUBCO which provides geographically diverse, low-latency subsea cable system connectivity from Australia to the Middle East and beyond.
Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.
Image Credit: Google Cloud
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States. “These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes, but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” said Communications Minister Michelle Rowland in a statement.
SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defence surveillance aircraft.
Although 900 km (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.
The new subsea cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.
Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 km of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
Image Credit: Vocus

“Vocus is thrilled to have the opportunity to deepen our strategic network partnership with Google, and to play a part in establishing critical digital infrastructure for our region. Australia Connect will bolster our nation’s strategic position as a vital gateway between Asia and the United States by connecting key nodes located in Australia’s East, West, and North to global digital markets,” said Jarrod Nink, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Vocus.

“The combination of the new Australia Connect subsea cables with Vocus’ existing terrestrial route between Darwin and Brisbane, will create a low latency, secure, and stable network architecture. It will also establish Australia’s largest and most diverse domestic inter-capital network, with unparalleled reach and protection across terrestrial and subsea paths.

“By partnering with Google, we are ensuring that Vocus customers have access to high capacity, trusted and protected digital infrastructure linking Australia to the Asia Pacific and to the USA. “The new subsea paths, combined with Vocus’ existing land-based infrastructure, will provide unprecedented levels of diversity, capacity and reliability for Google, our customers and partners,” Nink said.

“Australia Connect advances Google’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. We’re excited to collaborate with Vocus to build out the reach, reliability, and resiliency of internet access in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region,” said Brian Quigley, VP, Global Network Infrastructure, Google Cloud.

Perth, Darwin, and Brisbane are key beneficiaries of this investment and are now emerging as key nodes on the global internet utilizing the competitive and diverse subsea and terrestrial infrastructure established by the Vocus network.  Vocus will be in a position to supply an initial 20-30Tbps of capacity per fiber pair on the announced systems, depending on the length of the segment.

References:

Equinix and Vodafone to Build Digital Subsea Cable Hub in Genoa, Italy

Google Cloud revenues up 54% YoY; Cloud native security is a top priority

Posted on by Alan Weissberger

Google Cloud revenues increased 54% year over year to $4.62 billion during the second quarter of 2021, parent company Alphabet reported today. Google Cloud’s operating loss shrunk 59%, from $1.42 billion a year ago to $591 million last quarter.

Google Cloud includes both Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and its Workspace (formerly G Suite) cloud computing services and collaboration tools.

Like previous quarters, “GCPs revenue growth was, again, above cloud overall, reflecting significant growth in both infrastructure and platform services,” the company said in a statement.

“As for Google Cloud, we remain focused on revenue growth, and are pleased with the trends we’re seeing across cloud,” Google CFO Ruth Porat said on the company’s 2Q-2021 earnings call today. Porat added that growth in its Google Cloud Platform segment again surpassed overall cloud gains “reflecting significant growth in both infrastructure and platform services.”

“We will continue to invest aggressively, including expanding our go-to-market organization, our channel expansion, our product offerings, and our compute capacity,” she said.

Also on today’s earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai cited security as a competitive differentiator and “our strongest product portfolio.”  Google will continue to invest in security and continue its work to integrate its various security products such as Beyond Corp and Chronicle, he added.

“Cyber threats increasingly are on the mind of not just CIOs but CEOs across our partners. So it’s definitely an area where we are seeing a lot of conversations, a lot of interest…so a definite source of strength and you’ll see us continue to invest here,” he said.

“We are cloud native, we pioneered … zero trust and built the architecture out from a security-first perspective.  Particularly, over the course of the last couple of years, with the recent attacks, [companies] really started thinking deeply about vulnerabilities, supply chain security has been a major source of consensus, cyber threats are increasingly on the mind of, not just CIOs, but CEOs across our partners. So it’s definitely an area where we are seeing a lot of conversations, a lot of interest.”

Google Cloud, along with its other business units, boosted  Alphabet’s revenue 62% year over year, to $61.9 billion. As usual, Google ad revenue represented the biggest piece of the pie. It grew 69% to $50.44 billion.  Retail was the biggest contributor to advertising growth.

Google Cloud holds around 7% market share in the cloud services segment, according to a Canalys report released in April 2021. It trails Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which hold 32% and 19% market share, respectively.

Microsoft posted financial results Tuesday, its Intelligent Cloud revenue increased 30% to $17.4 billion. The company stated Azure revenue grew of 51%, but did not break out a dollar figure. Amazon is set to report earnings on Thursday.

Along with their hyper-scale cloud competitors Google Cloud is partnering with telecom companies all over the world to help them drive transformation and accelerate 5G adoption and monetization.

Here are a few of their telco partners:

 

………………………………………………………………….

References:

https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=4db52a1

https://abc.xyz/investor/

https://www.fiercetelecom.com/financial/google-cloud-revenue-climbs-54-q2

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/google-cloud-losses-shrink-59-revenue-hits-4-6b/2021/07/

https://techblog.comsoc.org/tag/google-cloud/

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/telecommunications

Archives