Google Inc. has entered an agreement with five Asian communications and telecom companies regarding the construction of an underwater cable network that will connect United States to Japan.
The systems supplier for this network is NEC Corp., an information technology service provider headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. According to Reuters, the construction of the cable network would begin immediately, and service should be available in the second quarter of 2016.
The project's estimated cost is $300 million. Connected to Chikura and Shima, Japan, the Trans-Pacific cable will also service neighboring Asian locations beyond Japan, as well as major hubs in the Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Portland and Seattle areas. The search giant chose to build the network underwater to provide a faster and more reliable connection.
"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. And sometimes the fastest path requires going through an ocean," said Urs Hölzle, Google's senior vice president of technical infrastructure and Google Fellow, on Google+.
The cable network, to be named "FASTER," will have a initial design capacity of 60 terabits per second, "10 million times faster than your cable modem," according to Hölzle. FASTER is designed to accommodate high traffic demands for applications, content, business, broadband, and mobile data.
The five Asian businesses joining the investment includes China Mobile International, China Telecom Corp Ltd.'s unit, China Telecom Global, KDDI Corp., Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and TIME Dotcom Bhd's Global Transit.
"The agreement announced today will benefit all users of the global Internet," said FASTER executive committee chairman Woohyong Choi, as quoted by Reuters.
