JAYNE STOWELL: People think that the internet is in the cloud.
People think of wireless, things going through the air.
But the reality is 98% of traffic
goes through fiber optic cables.
VIJAY VUSIRIKALA: 70% of the world is covered with water.
These are fiber optic cables that are laid under the water.
And that's why we call them sub-sea cables.
CRISTIAN RAMOS: We have a data center in Chile.
We need to connect the data center with the US.
JAYNE STOWELL: Our products are growing.
Our products are more sophisticated.
They need more bandwidth.
CRISTIAN RAMOS: South America is a very costly region.
We can not scale using the existing cables
because they don't have enough capacity.
They are almost at the end of life.
And their costs are very high.
ANDREW METCALF: Curie is a submarine cable system
that Google has built between Los Angeles and Valparaiso,
Chile.
CRISTIAN RAMOS: So it's our first experience
on an international private cable.
We are going to be able to bring more content to the region.
ANDREW METCALF: And extend our ability
to connect to users in that part of the world.
Curie consists of about 10,500 kilometers of submarine cable,
which is about 2 and 1/2 times the length
between the East and West coast of the United States.
VIJAY VUSIRIKALA: In optics, the further you
go, the lower the capacity of fiber barriers.
So if you take something like Curie,
we decided to go with four fiber pairs.
It supports approximately 18 terabytes
per second for a total of about 72 terabytes per second
on that cable.
ANDREW METCALF: And spaced out every 100 kilometers
along that cable, we have an amplifier,
which is also called a repeater in the industry,
to amplify the signal.
VIJAY VUSIRIKALA: As light traverses through the fiber,
it loses some of its intensity.
So imagine if you did not have it a repeater.
It just becomes impossible to recover that signal
because that signal is now absolutely
indistinguishable from noise.
DEBBIE BRASK: The undersea cables basically
started out with copper cables.
Now it's basically the size of a garden hose without armor.
So on top of our fiber optic core,
there are some armor wires to add strength.
And then on top of that is a copper path,
which allows us to power our repeaters and amplifiers.
On top of that, you have a protective coating
so that you don't have electrical short to the ocean.
JAYNE STOWELL: There is no adverse environmental impact
from submarine cables.
They are made of completely inert materials
that do no harm to the flora, the fauna, of the oceans.
There is a short period of disruption
during the time of installation or repair,
but nature covers it very, very quickly.
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ANDREW METCALF: So we're on board the sub-com cable ship
Doraville.
In the distance, you can see the cable factory.
And that long structure coming down to the ship
is called the highline.
That conveys the cable from the storage area in the factory
onto the cable ship.
Pieces of the manufacturing process are automated.
And the actual deployment of the cable into the ocean
is automated as well.
The loading part is the most manual part of the project.
JAYNE STOWELL: No new cable has landed
in Chile for over 15 years.
CRISTIAN RAMOS: So there was not a lot
of experience within the government of how
to process all the necessary permits,
or which permits were needed, for handling the cables.
TAMAR COLODENKO: We set up a workshop
with some of the local authorities
to really inform them about why this
was important for the country.
What were the benefits?
What were the risks?
We really wanted them to feel like they
were part of this process.
And they were.
GLORIA HUTT: Installing a base here in the servers,
and now connecting the cable, is a physical and very material
demonstration of trust in the capabilities
that our country has been chosen for this.
It means that we are advancing in the right direction.
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