British St Helena Island authorities officially announced on July 19 that it would host Equiano, a submarine cable project led by Google. With a population of only 4,500, the island will be connected to terabits per second of high-speed Internet access.
St Helena, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, is one of British foreign territories. As can be seen from the fact that Napoleon was a confined area, it is difficult to access. The airport here is sometimes referred to as the least used airport in the world. Of course, the communication network is not developed, so residents use the Internet by sharing a 50 megabit per second satellite line. The communication environment here is like a dial-up line, and it takes a lot of time to read a single image file rather than Skype.
However, the new installation in St Helena is Equiano, a submarine cable laying project led by Google. Named after the liberation slave, the project connects submarine cables from Portugal to South Africa with a transmission capacity of 20 times the conventional one. Funds are raised through the European Development Fund, according to St Helena authorities.
Equiano cables not only have excellent transmission capacity, but also have the advantage that capacity can be added or redistributed easily and inexpensively by adopting spatial division multiplexing SDM technology, a new technology for submarine cables. Of course, no matter how cost-effective Equiano Cable is, it can be considered excessive to install terabit submarine cables per second on this island with a population of less than 5,000. But there is a reason the Equiano Cable goes to St Helena Island.
In April of last year, a large-scale network failure occurred due to submarine cable damage, and Internet communication was cut off in 10 countries in western Africa for three days. In addition, although the specific plan was not disclosed, it is known that there is a mid-Atlantic cable hub plan to maintain the submarine cable network crossing the South Atlantic through St Helena in the future.
Equiano is not the first cable to be installed in St Helena. In March of last year, it was decided to install SAex (South Atlantic Express), a submarine cable connecting the United States and South Africa. There is some information that the future of SAex is uncertain, but if Equiano Cable and SAex are connected, St Helena is expected to become a communication hub connecting the United States, Europe, South America and Africa, out of the altitude of a sea where the Internet is barely accessible. Related information can be found here .