Google Buys Into Undersea Cable
Having outgrown the capacity of telecom companies to provide bandwidth for its online applications and services, Google is buying part of an undersea cable to carry data to and from Asia.
On Tuesday, Google said it would join with five other telecom companies -- Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel -- to invest $300 million in the construction of a 10,000 km submarine cable.
The high-speed fiber optic trans-Pacific cable, called Unity, will have a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps and will run between the United States and Japan, about 6,200 miles. It is planned to accommodate demand for trans-Pacific bandwidth, which has grown at a rate of 63.7% annually between 2002 and 2007 and is expected to double biannually from 2008 through 2013, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications consultancy.
