Google Partners with Chile and French Polynesia to Build First Subsea Cable Connecting South America to Asia-Pacific

The Humboldt project, expected to be completed in 2026, will create a more direct route from Australia to South America and position Chile as the gateway to Latin America for data transport from Asia Pacific.

• Google, in partnership with Chilean state-run infrastructure fund Desarrollo Pais and the Office of Posts and Telecommunications of French Polynesia (OPT), is building the first ever subsea cable connecting South America to Asia-Pacific.
• The 9,200 miles (14,800 km) of cable, named Humboldt, will stretch from Chile to Australia through the South Pacific, interconnecting the cables that comprise the South Pacific Connect initiative and creating a more direct route from Australia to South America.
• The project, which is now entering the materialization phase, is expected to be completed in 2026 and will position Chile as the gateway to Latin America for data transport from Asia Pacific.
• The US State Department plans to contribute $15 million to enable access to fast, secure, interoperable, and reliable internet connectivity in several unnamed Pacific Island countries.
• The Humboldt project is part of Google's larger initiatives to expand its fiber-optic network, which includes the Google data center in Quilicura, the Google Cloud region in Santiago, the cross-Andes terrestrial connectivity between Chile and Argentina, and the Curie subsea cable linking Chile, Panama, and the West Coast of the United States.

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