Google building 60 Tb/s submarine cable between the U.S. and Asia

Google has recently announced plans to build an underwater trans-Pacific cable that will connect Japan to the West coast of the United States with speeds ranging up to 60 terabytes per second. The plan, ironically dubbed FASTER, is a joint effort between Google and some of the largest Asian-based telecom companies: NEC, KDDI, China Telecom Global, SingTel, China Mobile International, and Global Transit.
 
At the cost of $300 million, the project is scheduled for completion by the second quarter of 2016 and will link Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco to Shima and Chikura in southeastern Japan. According to the research firm Statista, the number of Internet users in Asia is growing rapidly, already having reached nearly twice that of the rest of the world so it’s not surprising that Google’s FASTER project aims to capitalize on this market and streamline the service’s delivery. 

Source: Statista

Urs Hölzle, Google’s VP of Technical Infrastructure, writes on his Google+ pages that the most efficient way of providing this growing audience with reliable and fast Internet is to go provide a direct means. “Sometimes the fastest path requires going through an ocean, that’s why we’re investing in FASTER, a new undersea cable that will connect major West Coast cities in the US to two coastal locations in Japan … FASTER will make the internet, well, faster and more reliable for our users in Asia.”

Google’s ventures into the Asian market are not without its challenges; China regularly disrupts Google’s services for political reason. Just a few months ago, the New York Times reported that users were cut off from the search engine as well as all of its service during the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest. While it’s uncertain how FASTER will affect long term accessibility, the one thing we do know is that Google must find a way to reach users in the region without stepping on the toes of Chinese government authorities.

Although FASTER is not the first trans-Pacific submarine cable, the latest project is the most robust in terms of speed. “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,” said Google’s Woohyong Choi, the upcoming FASTER executive committee chairman. Prior Asian-telecom collaborations include Unity in 2008 and South-East Asia Japan Cable (SJC) in 2011; they transmit data at 3.3 Tb/s and 28 Tb/s.

Via TechCrunch/NEC