Google to build 10,000 km underwater fiber optic cable system to Japan

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The consortium of six companies includes Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI, Pacnet and Singtel. Together, they're calling this cable system “Unity”. They are building this system to meet the high traffic demand between the United States and Asia.

NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications will be the suppliers for Unity, expected to go live in the first quarter of 2010.

Unity will initially increase the Trans-Pacific Cable capacity by about 20 per cent and be able to transfer more than 7.68 Terabits per second (Tbps) across the Pacific.

As a news release from Google reports: "According to the TeleGeography Global Bandwidth Report, 2007, Trans–Pacific bandwidth demand has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63.7 percent between 2002 and 2007. It is expected to continue to grow strongly from 2008 to 2013, with total demand for capacity doubling roughly every two years."

Unity spokesperson Jayne Stowell said, ""The Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online, giving users faster and more reliable connectivity."

This new 10,000 kilometer (6,214 miles) Trans–Pacific cable will provide connectivity between Chikura, located off the coast near Tokyo, to Los Angeles and other West Coast network points of presence. From Chikura, Unity will then be connected to other cable systems boosting connectivity for Asian regions.

The new five fiber pair cable system can be expanded up to eight fiber pairs, with each fiber pair capable of carrying up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps). By having a high-fiber count, Unity is able to offer more capacity at lower unit costs.

Since traffic is expected to increase even more in the Trans-Pacific cable systems, it makes sense for Google to purchase them at cost and thus be able to save and also provide a better service for Japan and other Asian countries.

Google’s manager of network acquisition, Francois Stern said on his blog,

As more and more people conduct online searches and interact with applications like Gmail, Google Earth and YouTube, we’ve had to think outside the box to create a more scalable, affordable and easy to manage network that meets our users’ needs worldwide. One of the biggest challenges we face is staying ahead of our broadband capacity needs, especially across Asia.

He also assured the world Google is not going into the undersea cable business and will not be competing with big Telecos. Stern said this cable is being laid just to help them transfer the increasing volume of data seamlessly to its users.