Update: A Google spokesperson told DCD: "The disruption with Google Cloud Networking and Load Balancing has been resolved as of Wednesday, 2019-07-03 07:35 US/Pacific.

"The physical damage to the fiber bundles serving some network paths in us-east1 have been repaired, and we have removed the elective routing mitigations previously in place and returned to normal routing in the region.

"We will perform an internal review of the incident and make appropriate improvements so that our customers continue to be able to operate reliably during incidents such as this."

The company declined to share details about what exactly happening, telling DCD simply "there was physical damage to the cables."

Original story: Damaged fiber cables have limited a Google data center region's Internet connection. Google has reported continuing physical problems in the network link at the Google Cloud us-east1 data center region - which continue as we write.

"The disruptions with Google Cloud Networking and Load Balancing have been root caused to physical damage to multiple concurrent fiber bundles serving network paths in us-east1," Google said.

Silicon Valley disruptor, disrupted

Google continued: "In the meantime, we are electively rerouting traffic to ensure that customers' services will continue to operate reliably until the affected fiber paths are repaired. Some customers may observe elevated latency during this period."

The problem began at 10:25 Pacific time, July 2, and - at time of writing - is still ongoing. "We expect a full resolution within the next 24 hours," Google said at 16:05 Pacific time, July 2.

Google added that the fiber "vendor has been notified and are currently investigating the issue," but currently the reason for the physical damage is not known.

While the vendor impacting the Berkeley County, South Carolina campus was not disclosed, a few hours after the incident began, telecoms company CenturyLink tweeted: "We’re still investigating reports of a fiber cut affecting customers in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Morrisville, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina."

Comcast South added: "Attention Charleston customers - We are aware of a significant fiber outage by another area provider which has also impacted Comcast Xfinity services. We are working w/ local providers & power companies to restore services as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience."

DCD has contacted CenturyLink for clarification on whether the two issues are related, and will update this story when we learn more. Update: CenturyLink declined to confirm whether the problems were related, and declined to disclose how the cable was damaged, but said that it was a "third-party fiber cut."

Google's history in Berkeley

While Google's us-east1 region was launched in 2015, the data center campus that it runs in is much older. Opened in 2008, the Berkeley County, South Carolina campus was originally used solely for Google's own, non-Cloud, services.

The site was expanded in 2013, bringing the company’s total investment in the campus to $1.8 billion. It currently is planning another $600m expansion, after securing access to the large quantities of water needed for cooling.