Google to land Curie submarine cable in Equinix Los Angeles data center

Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX) says that Google has decided to land its Curie submarine cable in the Equinix LA4 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in El Segundo, CA. The Curie submarine network, which will connect Chile with the U.S., is expected to be ready for service later this year.

The agreement is an example of a growing trend toward integrating cable landing stations within existing data centers. Equinix says its cable landing station/data center configuration enables direct connection of submarine cable systems to the companies and carriers connected within its IBX data centers. In addition to simplifying network design, this arrangement also reduces latency. The company says it currently is the interconnection partner in more than 25 current undersea cable projects (see, for example, "Equinix data centers to link to Australia Singapore Cable system").

"With the significant increase in global data traffic, we see corporations running global businesses demanding access to high-capacity, low-latency networks capable of connecting them to data centers across oceans with stringent levels of reliability,” explained Jim Poole, vice president, business development, at Equinix. “Any user of a subsea cable system that lands inside one of our Equinix global data center termination points has instant, low-latency access to a host of vibrant industry ecosystems inside Equinix, and that's a huge advantage."

The Curie submarine network will run from El Segundo to Valparaiso in Chile (see “Google details submarine network investments”). The four fiber-pair system will cross more than 10,000 km and be designed to enable a potential future branch to Panama, according to TE Subcom, which Google selected to deploy the submarine cable system.

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