Google said that the Tabua subsea cable will connect the U.S. and Australia via Fiji and is expected to enter service later this year
In sum – what to know:
Second landing – Tabua has now landed in both Queensland and Sydney, strengthening Australia’s international subsea connectivity.
High capacity – The cable is designed with 16 fiber pairs at 17 Tbps each, supporting large-scale cloud and data traffic.
Strategic route – Tabua adds a new pathway linking the U.S. and Australia via Fiji, improving network resilience beyond existing routes.
Google’s Tabua subsea cable has made landfall in Sydney, Australia, following its initial Australian landing in Queensland late last year.
Google executives confirmed that the cable reached shore in the Maroubra area of Sydney, New South Wales. The landing is part of Google’s broader South Pacific Connect initiative, first announced in October 2023, aimed at improving the resilience and reliability of digital connectivity across the region.
The Tabua subsea cable will connect the United States and Australia via Fiji and is expected to enter service later this year. The system reportedly includes 16 fiber pairs, each designed for a minimum capacity of 17 Tbps.
Alongside Google’s planned Honomoana cable, Tabua will be among the first subsea systems to connect the U.S. and Australia beyond Sydney. In addition to Sydney, landing points include Los Angeles, California; Oahu, Hawaii; Natadola and Suva in Fiji; and Queensland, Australia.
The cable previously landed in Queensland in November at NextDC’s cable landing station in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast. Google has also broken ground on a cable landing station in Fiji to support the system.
Melanie Silva, managing director and VP, Google Australia & New Zealand at Google said in a LinkedIn post: “Subsea cables carry 99% of international traffic, making them a key component of our digital export economy and national productivity. Back in 2023, we announced the Pacific Connect initiative to deliver new subsea cables connecting Fiji and French Polynesia to Australia and the US, and this is one piece of that work coming to life.
“By adding another path for data to travel, we’re making our connection to the rest of the world more reliable. Stronger infrastructure means local startups and companies can reach global customers and innovate with confidence,” Silva added.
Trans Pacific Networks (TPN), which is leasing capacity on Tabua, has recently said it will use Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme coherent optics and the 6500 Reconfigurable Line System, alongside Google’s Echo subsea systems.
In a recent interview with RCR Wireless News, Brian Lavallée, senior director, market and competitive intelligence at Ciena, explained how are AI-driven traffic patterns—training, inference, and inter-data-center flows—changing the way subsea cable operators design and light transpacific routes.
“Distributed training over subsea distances has unavoidable distance-related latency challenges meaning that today, most distributed training is over much shorter distances. This means current subsea AI traffic will primarily involve moving large training datasets into AI factories for LLM training, as well as replication of training datasets and associated models in different locations,” the executive said.
