Grace Hopper

Overview

Grace Hopper is a transatlantic submarine cable system spanning 7,191 km, connecting the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain. The cable is named after the pioneering American computer scientist and naval officer Grace Brewster Murray Hopper. It serves the North Atlantic corridor, linking North America with Western Europe across two separate European landing points.

Route and Landings

In the United States, the cable lands at Bellport, New York. In the United Kingdom, it comes ashore at Bude, on the coast of Cornwall. In Spain, the cable lands at Bilbao, in the Basque Country in northern Spain.

Ownership and Operators

Grace Hopper is wholly owned by Google. The cable represents one of several privately owned subsea infrastructure investments Google has made to support its global network operations.

Technical Profile

The cable extends 7,191 km across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting its three landing points. No additional technical specifications — such as fiber pair count, design capacity, or equipment supplier — are available for this system.

Status and Timeline

Grace Hopper entered service in 2022. The cable is currently operational, carrying traffic across the North Atlantic.

Regional Context

The North Atlantic corridor served by Grace Hopper is one of the most active submarine cable corridors in the world, with multiple long-haul systems connecting North America and Europe. Among cables sharing landing points in this corridor are 2Africa, which also lands in Spain and the United Kingdom and entered service in 2024, and Project Waterworth, a planned system with a United States landing point. At 7,191 km, Grace Hopper is considerably shorter than most of its regional peers, reflecting the relatively compact transatlantic distance to its European endpoints in the United Kingdom and Spain rather than longer southern or Pacific routes.

Measured performance over the last 60 days, based on 33 ping tests, shows an average round-trip latency of 77.3 ms, with a best recorded result of 37.0 ms. These figures are consistent with a cable of this length operating across the North Atlantic.

Strategic Role

By landing at two separate European locations — Bude in the United Kingdom and Bilbao in Spain — Grace Hopper provides geographic diversity for transatlantic connectivity between North America and Western Europe. The dual European landing configuration means that traffic can reach both the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula through a single cable system, reducing reliance on transit through a single European hub.