For more than three decades, Christmas Island has depended on phosphate mining and exports for its economic livelihood. But these supplies won’t last forever, and so the Australian territory is working on diversifying its economy. Its leaders have partnered with Google to construct a data hub on the island as part of the company’s Australia Connect Initiative. Launched a year ago, the project aims to improve the “reach, reliability, and resilience of digital connectivity in Australia and the Indo-Pacific.”
Once completed, the data hub would drastically increase the strategic value of Christmas Island. Besides improving Indo-Pacific connectivity, Google’s larger plan involves laying cables along Australia’s southern coast, in addition to a South Pacific Connect Initiative, which entails two new cables connecting the U.S. and Australia – one via Fiji and one via French Polynesia. Under these plans, Christmas Island would be connected to southern Australia through extensions of the interlink cable and would have access to the U.S.-linked cables through a terrestrial connection.
