GOOGLE’S 14TH FACILITY

The tech giant Google, has finally disclosed plans to build a new data center in Uruguay. This facility will be joining the company’s Chile data center in Latin America.

Google’s new Latin America (LATAM) data center will be sited within Uruguay’s Science Park in the Canelones area, over a 20 hectare land parcel that lies in a duty free zone. The local authorities of Canelones have last month, granted the permits for the project development in the specified area.

Although the project’s blueprint dates back to 2012, negotiations for the site were tightened-up when former Uruguay industry minister Carolina Cosse visited Google’s headquarters in the US about two years ago.

Google is further believed to have privately confirmed its decision on the Uruguay data center in 2017, after an undersea cable installation between the Uruguayan beach resort of Punta del Este and the city of Fortaleza in Brazil, in addition to a submarine fiber optic cable that connects the Santos and Fortaleza (Brazil) with Boca Raton (Florida, USA).

The existence of a subsea cable landing between Fortaleza and Boca Raton in Florida completes the vital loop to the US, where key communications players and enterprises can connect across North America and beyond. The project became a success with the help of a service contract signed between Google and Uruguay telecom firm Antel, in 2015.

With the project, Antel got its elevation to the sixth largest international telecommunications services provider in South America. On the other hand, Google is already involved in the deployment of the “Curie” subsea cable in the Pacific Ocean between the US coast and the Chilean port of Valparaíso, and the Tannat line linking the area’s Atlantic coast and the US as well.

This Google Uruguayan facility will be its 14th hyperscale data center globally, joining the six in the United States, three in Europe, three in Asia and the Chilean one.