The progress of Google’s submarine cables project is becoming clearer, with the elements of the authorization request from the FCC, the American regulator. Tahiti will be served by two segments connected to the Honomoana cable, which will run more than 100km off the coast of Tahiti and whose potential bandwidth capacities are incommensurate with those we know today.
We know a little more about the cables that Google is preparing to deploy in the South Pacific, thanks to the request made to the Federal Communications Commission, the American regulatory body, to “the construction, landing and operation of an optical submarine cable connecting the United States to New Zealand and Australia via French Polynesia”named Honomoana, whose geographical configuration is specified.
According to the specialized media Wmediathe particularity of Honomoana will be to start from a site in San Diego County (California) whereas until now all the landing points of the transpacific cables were located further north, between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. On the Australian side, this is the first time that one of these cables will have its landing point in the state of Victoria, with a diversion towards New South Wales. New Zealand, already well integrated into the international submarine cable network, will have only one connection to Honomoana.
Connections more than 100 km off the coast of Fenua
The request to the FCC confirms two landing points in French Polynesia, in Tahiti Nui and Tahiti Iti. The document explains that the segmented design of the system allows for multiple power supply, making it less prone to possible general outages and thus securing the island’s connectivity.
The main segment between California and Victoria will be 14,215 km long. It is to this segment that the two “branches” to Tahiti will be connected. The Tahiti Nui segment will be 115 km long, and the Tahiti Iti segment will be 156 km long. Each cable will have 16 fiber pairs, with each pair having a minimum capacity of 16.2 Tbps (terabyte per second) “under current state of technology”. For comparison, the bandwidth of the Honotua cable was increased in early 2023 to 0.3 Tbps. It remains to be seen what capacity Polynesia will negotiate on the Google cable. Moetai Brotherson, during his visit to one of Subcom’s ships three months ago, declared that the arrival of Google would multiply the available capacity “by 50 times”.
It is “Starfish Infrastructure Inc”, a 100% subsidiary of Google in the United States, which is making the request. However, it is another Google subsidiary, Sea Fan Singapore Infrastructure, which holds “100% of the capital and voting rights for the portion located in international waters. » Starfish intends to install and test Honomoana in US waters in the first quarter of 2026, and begin operations in the fourth quarter.
A similar request was also made for Tabua, the cable that will connect the United States – this time from Los Angeles – to Australia via Fiji. It also has the potential for a connection to French Polynesia, but this is not mentioned in the application.
