Google says undersea cables created over 64,000 jobs in Taiwan

Taipei, Sept. 26 (CNA) U.S.-based tech giant Google Corp. said on Tuesday that its efforts to build four underseas cables to connect Taiwan with the world had created more than 64,000 jobs and generated about US$26 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) for Taiwan as of 2021.

In a statement, Google said the four undersea cables are part of the company's investments in cloud infrastructure in Taiwan, and on the back of the undersea cables, a data center and a Google Cloud Region, which is a geographic area in which Google provides infrastructure and services for deploying applications, the U.S. company has transformed Taiwan as a strategic cloud infrastructure hub in the world.

Google said it will continue its "Intelligent Taiwan" plan by investing more in cloud infrastructure in the country, with an aim to build Taiwan as the Silicon Valley in Asia.

According to Google, the four undersea cables include the FASTER cable, which connects Taiwan and Japan, and the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which connects Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines and the United States.

Google's Apricot cable to connect Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia is slated for operations in 2024, and the cable is using advanced multicore fiber (MCF) made Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), the company said.

MCF is designed to offer higher bandwidth capacity compared to traditional single-core optical fibers, enabling the transmission of more signals simultaneously over optical fiber.

In 2013, Google inaugurated a data center in the Changbin Industrial Park of Changhua County, central Taiwan, by investing US$600 million to allow Taiwan to have the first Google data center in the Asia Pacific region.

This year, Google celebrated the 10th anniversary of the data center, and Gary Demasi, senior vice president of the company's global data center operations, said in the statement that Google's centers serve as the foundation for the company to achieve its goal to "make AI helpful to everyone."

During the past decade, Demasi said, Google has delivered on its promise to build a data center in Taiwan and meet the demand for users in the region and around the world, while its investments in Taiwan have given a boost to the local economy and enhanced sustainability and progress in the local community.

Google said although demand for computing applications is on the rise, a Google data center still is able to make itself more energy efficient, adding its facility is about 150 percent more energy efficient than its counterparts built by other companies.

Google said its data center is able to save about 10 percent in power consumption while cutting carbon emissions by about 10 percent.

In Taiwan, water consumed by the data center in the Changbin Industrial Park has been completely for industrial purposes since 2022 to ensure the facility will not use water designated for households, Google said.

In addition to the data center, the Google Cloud Region in Taiwan, which is also the first of its kind in the Asia Pacific region, celebrated its 10th anniversary. Google said the facility has provided strong support to its enterprise clients.