<p>As the most important large-scale communication infrastructure in the world today, submarine cable can profoundly reflect the global Internet communication pattern, and is of great significance for understanding the global digital divide. We used multi-scale and network analysis methods to depict the distribution pattern, network structure and spatio-temporal evolution of global submarine cables at the national and landing point scales, in order to analyze the current situation, challenges and main directions of global digital divide governance. Results show that: (1) spatial distribution of global submarine cables is unbalanced, the United States and Europe are the concentrated distribution areas of submarine cables and global information flow centers; (2) core connections of the global submarine cable network are only composed of a tiny minority of countries or regions or landing points, and have strong geographical proximity and clustered-type characteristic, noting that multitudinous landing points of developed countries are at the semi-periphery or even periphery of the network; (3) submarine cables can alleviate the global digital divide through the three paths of infrastructure universalization, digital ecosystem reconstruction and economic empowerment, and the global digital divide governance still faces the dilemma of the differences in digital strategy development and the lack of a governance system. However, due to the increasingly important position of cities in developing countries in the international communication pattern, the global digital divide problem is being alleviated.</p>