Google's America-India Connect and SING cables: Why they matter
India Today
Laid on the seabed, subsea cables form the backbone of the world's internet, transmitting 99% of international data traffic. The recently announced India-America Connect Initiative and the proposed SING project will connect India with the US, Singapore, South Africa, Australia, the Middle East among others, through underwater cables. Here's why subsea cables are so important.
Invisible yet indispensable, submarine or subsea cables form the physical backbone of the modern internet infrastructure. Over 99% of international data traffic, from video calls and financial transactions to e-mails and cloud services, travels through fibre-optic cables laid silently across the ocean floor, according to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Two proposed undersea cable projects fit perfectly into this global network.
The first is the recently announced proposed India-America Connect Initiative announced by Google to connect India, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, and the US with new cable networks to boost AI connectivity. The second is the proposed Singapore-India-Gulf (SING) subsea cable project, stalled since 2023, but is now seeing fresh developments in the UAE-backed project that will boost data transfers from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, via India.
Before getting into why the India-America Connect Initiative and the SING projects are so important, let's have a look at the undersea cable networks.
As noted by TeleGeography, subsea cables are fibre-optic communication lines on the seabed that carry the vast majority of global data flows. At their core, these cables are bundles of ultra-thin glass fibres, protected by layers of steel, copper and insulation. Data is transmitted as pulses of light, amplified at intervals by underwater repeaters.
Once laid, cables can be used reliably for decades, quietly linking continents and economies. Map of all subsea cable networks with landing stations in India as of February 2026. (Image courtesy of TeleGeography)
So, what are subsea-cable projects like Google's America-India Connect project and the SING project, and how does India fit into this global infrastructure?
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