Chile and Google on Wednesday signed an agreement to install the first-ever submarine fiber optic cable between South America, Asia and Oceania by 2027.

"This cable not only meets a technical need, but also represents a bet on resilience, diversification of digital routes, and the opening up of new possibilities for international collaboration," Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren said at the signing ceremony in Santiago.

Faster alternative for Chile

Chile is currently connected to the US and other continents via an undersea cable. This new initiative, called the "Humboldt Project," is expected to provide a faster alternative. 

The project is also expected to benefit Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. 

The plan is to build a 14,800-kilometer (9,200-mile) cable from Valparaiso on Chile's western coast to Australia's Sydney, via French Polynesia. 

"The idea of building this cable is that it can also be used not only by Google but also by other users, such as technology companies operating in Chile," said Cristian Ramos, director of telecommunications infrastructure for Latin America at Alphabet, Google's parent company.

The partnership was first announced in January 2024. Chile's government had then said the cable would have a capacity of 144 terabytes per second and would last 25 years.

Chile's Telecommunications Minister Juan Carlos Munoz said the new cable will also reduce the lapse between sending and receiving a signal, which will cause a big difference in the field of telemedicine. 

Google has invested somewhere between $300 million and $550 million (€250-480 million), local officials said.

The Chilean government will contribute $25 million (€ 21 million) to the project.

Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher