GOOGLE chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai on Wednesday announced the America-India Connect initiative, a subsea cable project aimed at improving data connectivity between the US, India, and all of the southern hemisphere.
The announcement by Pichai came after he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the AI summit in New Delhi. “We believe India is going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI, and we want to be a partner.
To help, we have launched new America-India Connect subsea cable routes building on our $15B investment in India’s infrastructure, including a full-stack AI hub in Vizag,” said Pichai.
On his meeting with Modi, Pichai said, X: “We discussed how Google is helping with his mission to infuse AI at all levels in India to improve health, expand access to information in all languages, support startups, agriculture, and so much more.”
Pichai is one of the prominent CEOs attending the AI summit wherein India is aspiring to position itself as a leader in global AI governance, particularly from the Global South perspective. Google, the American tech giant, said that in collaboration with local partners, America India Connect will establish a new international subsea gateway in Visakhapatnam (Vizag); three new subsea paths connecting India to Singapore, South Africa, and Australia; and four strategic fiber-optic routes that bolster network resilience and capacity between the United States, India, and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere.
Google said that they are developing a direct fiber-optic path between Vizag and Chennai on India’s east coast to South Africa. It added that when combined with the Equiano and Nivem subsea cable systems, this will create a redundant high-capacity route that connects the American east coast around Africa to Vizag.
Additionally, Google said that it is delivering a direct path between Vizag and Singapore. When combined with the Bosun and the Tabua subsea cable systems, this will create a South Pacific route that connects the American West Coast through Australia to Vizag, said Google.