This cable would undoubtedly have cost many times that amount had it run along the west coast of the USA rather than Africa. People always forget about currency conversion and purchasing power when having such discussions.
Are you using local talent to lay the cable? I would generally assume you use the same crew and same boats all the way through, who probably dont want to be paid in local currency.
Probably not local talent/currency along the whole route. But if we are comparing to a project off the West Coast of the US where (I think) they'd be required to use a US flagged vessel and American crew, then it still should be far cheaper. And that's before environmental reviews, etc.
There is a cable project currently ongoing for the east coast of the USA, called Confluence-1, to be finished in 2023. I wonder what their budget for that cable is.
To add to this, people would also likely forget that the US west coast is about 1/3 that of Africa’s, so it’ll get you only about as far as Nigeria. Africa is massive!
They would? Growing up we compared continents so it would be the west coast of all of North America from Panama to Alaska as a point of comparison to Africa.
FWIW the SEA-US cable occupies some prime beach town real estate in California and Hawaii and still only cost like $250m. I was looking at the cables that go along the west coast and the ones I checked were even cheaper than that, although they're old enough that inflation could be more of a factor
I was referring to the cost of the materials. If we are talking about labor, sure. Most of the cost I presume isn’t labor though. Materials are imported with a weakened currency.
Google's cash reserves are in USD. Either they are purchasing the materials in USD (so no difference to them), or in the local currency (which works out better when USD is strong). So either way a strong dollar is good for them.
You wrote: <<Google's cash reserves are in USD.>> I tried to search for confirmation of this fact. I cannot find anything. Do you have a source? And, can anyone confirm if you can pay for Google services using non-USD? I assume yes. I cannot believe that Google is selling adverts in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and not accepting local currency. Also, Google has many, many employees overseas (ex-US), so they need lots of non-USD to pay local employees and expenses (office space, etc.).
