Google Grace Hopper Submarine Cable
Google subsea cable linking New York to the UK and Spain using optical switching for route resilience
Open it on the earth: cut a link, lose a siteWorkbook (DC Sim template v1.4)
The story
Grace Hopper is a private subsea cable system built by Google connecting Bellport, New York to Bude in the United Kingdom and Sopelana/Bilbao in Spain. Spanning over 6,200 km, it incorporates 16 fiber pairs with a combined design capacity of approximately 352 Tbps. It was Google's first direct cable investment landing in Spain and was the first subsea cable worldwide to deploy optical switching technology at the fiber level, allowing automated traffic rerouting around physical link interruptions.
Notable
- Named after computer pioneer Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper, coinventor of early compilers.
- Features 16 fiber pairs delivering approximately 352 Tbps of capacity across the Atlantic Ocean.
- First Google-funded cable to land directly in Spain, connecting Bude in Cornwall and Bilbao in the Basque Country.
- Incorporates optical fast switching architecture to dynamically route capacity around fiber breaks.
Sites
| Code | Place | Role | Provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| NYC | Bellport (New York), United States | landing | |
| BDE | Bude, United Kingdom | landing | |
| BIO | Bilbao, Spain | landing | Google / Telxius |
Links
| From | To | Type | Capacity | Length | Year | Protected | Est. one-way latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NYC | BDE | submarine | 352 Tbps | 6,250 km | 2022 | no | ≈ 39.2 ms |
| NYC | BIO | submarine | 352 Tbps | 6,300 km | 2022 | no | ≈ 42.1 ms |
| BDE | BIO | submarine | 352 Tbps | 1,000 km | 2022 | no | ≈ 6.3 ms |
Latency marked ≈ is our estimate from the great-circle distance × 1.5 at 5 µs per km, not the operator's figure.
Sources
- Announcing the Grace Hopper subsea cable, linking the U.S., U.K. and Spain · Google · 2020-07-28
- SubCom completes landing of Google's Grace Hopper subsea cable in Bude, UK · SubCom · 2021-09-14
Part of the open famous data centers dataset (CC BY 4.0). Updated 2026-10-15.
What is Google Grace Hopper Submarine Cable famous for?
Google subsea cable linking New York to the UK and Spain using optical switching for route resilience
How many sites and links does Google Grace Hopper Submarine Cable have in this dataset?
3 sites and 3 links, of which 3 are recorded as not protected. Figures are from the public sources listed on the page.