Google partners with Chinese telecoms on Pacific cable

Want ChinaTimes, Staff Reporter 2014-08-13

A Google conference held in Beijing in May this year. (Photo/CFP)

Google is partnering with telecom operators and communications companies from five countries, including China Mobile and China Telecom, to lay a US$300 million undersea cable network across the Pacific Ocean. The network will be extended to other Asian countries in the future.

The international units of the two Chinese companies as well as France's Global Transit, Japan's KDDI Corp and Singapore Telecommunication will work with Google on the network, named FASTER. The network will connect major cities along the US west coast including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland to the Japanese coastal cities of Chikura and Shima.

The cable will be able to relay information at 60 terabits per second, 10 million times faster than modems, when the network begins providing services in the second quarter of 2016.

This is Google's third undersea cable network after the Unity cable network that the internet giant built in 2008 connecting Japan and the United States. Google has also invested in another cable network connecting Japan to countries in Southeast Asia including the Philippines and Thailand.