[DigitalSea]

I would love to see Google do this for Australia and New Zealand as well. Both countries are at the end of the line (so-to-speak) and would benefit greatly from something like this. Our Internet is pretty rubbish and expensive, and while that might be in part due to limited choice of ISP's, archaic Government policies and equipment, bandwidth is a HUGE problem.

[ripdog]

Australia yes, but please don't include New Zealand in that! Our internet is roaring along thanks to enlightened regulation and significant government investment. We're half-way through rolling out a GPON fibre network which will cover 75% of the population by 2019. I'm on 100/50mbit fibre right now, looking forward to a 1000/500 upgrade before the end of the year - totally uncapped and unshaped.

[NamTaf]

I always understood that the major problem with our internet is that >90% of our content comes via these cables, which makes the infrastructure costs of supplying bandwidth far more than, say, continental US where you don't have to cross literal oceans to reach all of the servers storing peoples' internet data.

If we consumed most of our internet from AU servers, our costs would decrease as you wouldn't need as fat intercontinental pipes.

[wluu]

There's one company already investing/building on this called SubPartners - http://www.subpartners.net

They are planning 3 submarine cables: 1. APX Central - Connecting Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-central.html 2. APX East - Sydney, NZ, California. http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-east.html 3. APX West - Perth, Jakarta, Singapore. http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-west.html

All 3 are planned to be completed by Q3, 2016. Obviously lots of factors and risks involved.

If Google (and others with investments in local clouds. eg: Amazon, Microsoft etc) wanted to invest, those 3 would be what you'd want to invest in.