Google's Pacific fiber optic cable departs from Japan to connect to America

The laying of a new high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable connecting North America and Asia via the northern Pacific Ocean began on November 1st from Japan. The cable line, called “Unity”, is a project of six major communication companies, including Google and Japan’s KDDI.

The Unity cable plan was announced in February of 2008 at a projected cost of $300 million USD. In the wake of rapidly increasing traffic between the two regions of the world, the six companies aim to increase the overall transpacific cable capacity by at least 20% when it is set to start operation sometime in spring of 2010. Yutaka Yasuda, KDDI’s General Manager of Technology Sector, commented “The project is of great importance to Japan and  America, as well as Asia." 

The cable, when finished, will stretch approximately 10,000 km (6,200 miles) from data centers in the Los Angeles area to KDDI’s data center in Chikura, just outside of Tokyo. From Japan, information can then be distributed to other countries in East Asia. The planned maximum capacity of Unity was 7.68 Tbps, however that number has since fallen to 4.8 Tbps for its initial use, according to a report from Japan’s ITpro. (For the curious, according to one reporter, John Bourdreau, 4.8 Tbps would supposedly be the equivalent of approximately 75 million simultaneous voice calls!)

The cable-laying ship, operated by Japan’s NEC Corporation, is expected to meet up with another cable-laying ship from America, operated by Tyco Telecommunications, sometime around November 11th. The cable will then be fused together. Tests are scheduled to be conducted before Unity is brought in to operational use early next year.

The Unity cable is a joint effort by Bharti Airtel (India), Global Transit (Malaysia), Google (US), KDDI Corporation (Japan), Pacnet (Hong Kong), and SingTel (Singapore).

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