Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Google's Alphabet that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.

With only 1,250 residents, Christmas Island lies 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian continent and is well situated in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.

As the U.S. and Australian forces modernize airfields in Australia's north, where Japanese troops will join a rotational group of U.S. Marines next year, the cable announcement was made.

According to a statement from Google's vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, the Bosun cable will connect Darwin to Christmas Island, while another undersea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia's east coast to Perth on the west coast and then to Christmas Island and Singapore.

By constructing additional underwater cable routes to Asia to the west and the United States via the South Pacific, Australia hopes to lessen its vulnerability to digital disruption.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland says, “These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia's digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government's active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient, and reliable connectivity across the Pacific.”

The other partners in the cable project are Subco, a telecommunications business sponsored by Macquarie, and NextDC, an Australian data center provider.

With spurs to the U.S. military outpost of Diego Garcia and Cocos Islands, where Australia is renovating a runway for defense surveillance aircraft, Subco previously constructed an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman.

The Australian Defence Force has stated that Christmas Island is essential to its maritime surveillance operations in an area where China is increasing submarine activity, even though it is just 900 kilometers (560 miles) away from Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.