Israel is playing a key role in Google’s huge fiber-optic cable project

Israel will soon have a critical place in Google’s expanding global fiber optic network. The US technology giant is planning a cable called Blue-Raman (the last half of which is named after Indian Nobel Laureate Venkata Raman), which runs between India and Italy through Israel.

Half the cable from Raman begins in the Indian port city of Mumbai, runs under the Indian Ocean and crosses an unnamed country believed to be Saudi Arabia before ending at the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

The blue part of the cable starts at the Italian port of Genoa, continues under the Mediterranean, passes through Israel and ends in Aqaba, where it is connected by the Raman cable.

With an estimated cost of $ 400 million, the Blue-Raman cable will reach Israel in 2022. Telecom Italia’s subsidiary Sparkle is partnering with Google in the west, while Raman’s share is being developed with Omani’s Omani telecommunications company.

Israel is currently connected to the World Wide Web by three submarine cables. One cable is owned by the Israeli telecom company Bezeq. The second, older cable is operated by Telecom Italia MedNautilus, which handles most of Israel’s offline traffic other than Bezeq. The third is controlled by the Israeli company Tamares Telecom, which serves smaller Internet companies and provides backups to others.

Israel has sufficient fiber-optic bandwidth on these cables; in fact, the use is as a single digit percentage. Nevertheless, Blue-Raman also benefits.

Although the proposed cable will handle traffic between Europe and Asia, industry sources said Israeli users could also use it. Blue-Raman uses the most advanced technology and has an exceptional broadband connection. In the meantime, Israeli contractors are being hired to build local infrastructure, including a Mediterranean cable (the location of which has not yet been determined) and an Aqaba road cable landing station. All of these contracts are worth millions of dollars. The new cable is expected to be critical for Israel in the future. MedNautilus cable is 20 years old and will reach the end of its life in another decade. The other two cables are approaching their 10th year of use. After completion, Blue-Raman will operate for 30 years.

Blue-Raman is part of a larger company to provide a new Internet connection to the global network for India and East Asia. The splitting of the cable is not related to technology, but to geopolitics, so as not to give the impression that the “Israeli” part of the cable passes through Saudi territory.

The second goal is to bypass Egypt. Today, the only cable connecting Europe and Asia runs across Egypt from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, avoiding the Suez Canal, the surface of which could damage the cable.

As the Open Cables blog explains: “Egypt is the largest single point in the world. With more than 15 cables in Egypt and about six more expected to be signed, almost a third of the world’s population is dependent on Egypt for Internet access. ”

State-owned Telecom Egypt has built a cable called TE North and is forcing others to use it, the blog writes.

Cutting this cable alone would disrupt traffic in a dozen countries. And, of course, crossing Egypt costs more than building a cable from Singapore to Marseille, ”said Open Cables. Egypt charges $ 300 million for the cable to cover its entire territory, and more was charged for it. “Google’s proposed Blue-Raman cable is the biggest news for the submarine cable industry since its inception three decades ago. This cable not only offers a full variety of routes through Israel, but also reduces traffic costs in Asia and Europe by at least 50%, ”says Open Cables.

Google has not published any official information about Blue-Raman, nor would it comment on this story or Telecom Italia. Google has shown its plans to global and local players in this field. In recent years, activity in the submarine cable sector has been boosted by the use of the Internet, globalization, which has brought companies closer together, and the rise of cloud computing.