{"id":344576,"date":"2025-12-13T03:55:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344576\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T03:55:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:55:11","slug":"google-to-build-undersea-cables-in-papua-new-guinea-under-australia-defence-treaty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344576\/","title":{"rendered":"Google to build undersea cables in Papua New Guinea under Australia defence treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google will build three subsea cables in Papua New Guinea, which the Pacific Island nation says is being funded by Australia under a mutual defence treaty.<\/p>\n

PNG said it would provide a key upgrade to its digital backbone and link the north and south of the nation with high-capacity cables.<\/p>\n

Australian and US military strategists view the resource-rich nation as being in a prime location north of Australia at a time when China is boosting its influence in the region.<\/p>\n

“Australia has committed over A$450 million ($300 million) to support undersea cable connectivity across the Pacific and Timor-Leste, including the Coral Sea Cable between Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Australia,” a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Australia is expected to also finance a new international cable to PNG under the Pukpuk Treaty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The $120-million effort will link northern and southern PNG and the Bougainville autonomous region, according to Peter Tsiamalili, PNG’s acting minister for information and communications technology.<\/p>\n

“The entire investment [is] funded through Australia’s commitments under the Pukpuk Treaty,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

PNG Acting Minister for Information and Communications Technology Peter Tsiamalili. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The project reflected both nations’ shared commitment to advance digital security, regional stability, and national development, Mr Tsiamalili added.<\/p>\n

The undersea cables will be built by Google, the statement said, adding that Mr Tsiamalili met Australian and US diplomats to discuss the project at Alphabet’s Sydney office this week.<\/p>\n

A Google Australia spokesperson declined to comment on the PNG project.<\/p>\n

DFAT said the cables would lower internet prices for consumers, support economic growth and increase education opportunities.<\/p>\n

The cables would position PNG to attract investment from hyper-scalers and global digital enterprises, Mr Tsiamalili, who is also police minister, said.<\/p>\n

The Pukpuk Treaty gives Australian Defence personnel access to PNG communications systems, including satellite stations and cables.<\/p>\n

The United States is also strengthening military ties with PNG, signing a defence cooperation pact in 2023.<\/p>\n

Australia, US seek to counter China’s influence<\/p>\n

Australia and the United States have funded various subsea cables across the Pacific Islands in recent years to block a push by China to build the vital communication links, which are viewed by Canberra as a security risk.<\/p>\n

More detail, even more questions for Google’s Christmas Island data hub<\/a><\/p>\n

Google’s plans for a data hub could drag this remote island from a digitally starved past into an AI-powered future. But are the locals ready?\u00a0<\/p>\n

PNG’s domestic submarine cable was built by China’s Huawei in 2018 and financed by a loan from China’s EXIM bank.<\/p>\n

Google said last month it planned to build a data hub<\/a> on Australia’s Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island, another strategic defence location, with new cables linking the island with Australian cities hosting key defence bases also used by the US military.<\/p>\n

Google said the plans would transform the island into a crossroads of the world’s data superhighways.<\/p>\n

It would connect Australia to one of the planet’s largest submarine cable systems, spanning more than 42,000 kilometres from the United States to Asia.<\/p>\n

Two more cable systems will extend westwards to Africa and Asia, to “deepen the resilience” of Indian Ocean internet infrastructure, Google said.<\/p>\n

ABC\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google will build three subsea cables in Papua New Guinea, which the Pacific Island nation says is being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3986,64,63,113,44,10956,27284,190744,15560,102692,89265],"class_list":{"0":"post-344576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-alphabet","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pacific","14":"tag-papua-new-guinea","15":"tag-peter-tsiamalili","16":"tag-png","17":"tag-pukpuk-treaty","18":"tag-subsea-cables"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}