Google has invested in a number of efforts designed to expand Internet access - from high-flying balloons to even higher-flying satellites. Now, it is going to the depths of the ocean with a new $300 million undersea cable effort.
The search giant is teaming with five Asian firms - China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel - to build and operate a new Trans-Pacific cable system, dubbed Faster. NEC Corporation will serve as system supplier, and Faster is expected to be up and running by the second quarter of 2016, NEC said.
"At Google we want our products to be fast and reliable, and that requires a great network infrastructure, whether it's for the more than a billion Android users or developers building products on Google Cloud Platform," Google's Urs Hölzle wrote in a Google+ post. "And sometimes the fastest path requires going through an ocean."
Faster will connect Chikura and Shima in Japan to major West Coast U.S. cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. It has a design capacity of 60 Tbps, which NEC said is about 10 million times faster than the average cable modem.
"The Faster cable system has the largest design capacity ever built on the Trans-Pacific route, which is one of the longest routes in the world. The agreement announced today will benefit all users of the global Internet," Woohyong Choi, chairman of the Faster executive committee, said in a statement.
The move builds on an agreement Google signed in 2008, dubbed Unity, that also sought to construct a new high-bandwidth, sub-sea cable system linking the U.S. and Japan.
In 2011, Google also teamed with a group known as the SJC consortium for a project that will link Brunei, China Mainland, Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan, and Singapore, with options to extend to Indonesia and Thailand.
"Along with our previous investments - Unity in 2008 and SJC (South-East Asia Japan Cable) in 2011, Faster will make the Internet, well, faster and more reliable for our users in Asia," said Google's Hölzle.