Chile has signed an agreement with Google to lay a submarine cable connecting Chile to Oceania.

Desarrollo País S.A., a state-owned infrastructure developer, and the Office of Posts and Telecommunications of French Polynesia will be responsible for installing the cable. Google joined the consortium in January 2024.

There are currently no subsea cables laid across the South Pacific.

The Humboldt Cable will establish a 14,000-km (8,699-mile) cable from Valparaiso, Chile, to French Polynesia. There are provisions for branches to additional locations, including Juan Fernandez (islands 670km [416 miles] off the coast of Chile), Easter Island, New Zealand, and Antarctica. Cost estimates range between $450 million and $650 million.

This will be connected to the Google-backed South Pacific Connect cable, which connects Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, and the U.S.

The cable will be owned equally by both parties.

The project’s development timeline started in 2016. Construction is set to begin this year and is estimated to become operational in Q4 2026.

Chile’s existing subsea infrastructure mainly connects it to Central and North America, with cable landing stations (CLS) straddling its extensive coast.

Chile has seen growing interest from American hyperscalers, including Amazon, which will invest $4 billion in a Chilean cloud region by the end of 2026. But serious concerns about the country’s water scarcity have delayed Google’s plans to develop its own data center.