Google partners with telcos to lay undersea transpacific cable

clipped from www.informationweek.com 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. When construction of Unity is complete in 2010, Google projects a 20% increase in the amount of available trans-Pacific bandwidth. NEC and Tyco Telecommunications will be handling the construction.