Humboldt Cable

The proposal for a direct fiber-optic link between South America and Asia was introduced during Michelle Bachelet's second administration in Chile, between 2014 and 2016. In 2017, Chile's Undersecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel), with support from the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), conducted a pre-feasibility study with China's Huawei, which identified three possible routes from Chile, all terminating in Shanghai: Auckland–Sydney–Shanghai, Tahiti–Shanghai, and Auckland–Shanghai. These studies identified the Valparaíso-Sydney route as the optimal option. In 2018, Australia banned Huawei from participating in its planned 5G networks. In 2019, the Chilean government received political pressure from the United States, including a visit from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to refrain from contracting Huawei for 5G technology, as part of a Washington campaign "against the Chinese company and the risk of Beijing collecting sensitive data." In 2021, the Chilean stated-owned enterprise Desarrollo País assumed leadership of the project, launching an international request for proposals the following year to validate the updated system costs. Two years later, a memorandum of understanding was signed with Google, laying the foundation for the partnership. Following the 2024 Leaders' Summit of the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, held in the United States, the partnership was first announced by the Chilean government in January 2024. it stated that the cable would have a capacity of 144 terabytes per second and a lifespan of 25 years.