Google Extends Undersea Cables to Boost Internet Services in Asia

Google has brought a new undersea data cable online to speed up Internet connections across Asia.

A consortium – made up of Google, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI and SingTel — has been working for the past two years on FASTER, the Trans-Pacific underwater cable system that connects the United States to two landing locations in Japan. As of this summer, the consortium began beaming light through the FASTER system “to extend the benefits” of the cable to the rest of Asia.

“We invested in a cable that links FASTER in Japan on to Taiwan, where our largest data center in Asia provides millions of people across Asia with quick access to our tools and services, at speeds of up to 26 terabits per second,” Google said in a blog post.

“You may not notice right away, but this new cable should help Google products and services load more quickly across the region. It should also improve the reliability and consistency of this speedier experience, since the cable was strategically built outside of tsunami zones to help prevent network outages related to natural disasters. With more people coming online every day in Asia than anywhere else in the world, we’ve been working hard to invest in the infrastructure needed to make the Internet work for all of us who live in the region. That’s why we’ve built two data centers in the region and have already expanded our facility in Singapore. It’s also why we’re investing in these undersea cables – to make everyone’s computing just a bit faster and to bring people around the world just a bit closer together.”

This project is not new ground for Google, according to the Wall Street Journal. The search engine firm took part in a similar $300-million cable project in 2010.

Private networks are most often used for home, office and businesses because of data security offered and because it cannot be accessed by devices outside the network. Public networks, on the other hand, enable anyone to gain access to other networks or the Internet.

Much of Google’s bandwidth is set aside for its private ‘B4’ network. The B4 network is used to send e-mails and transmit YouTube videos and other data, the WSJ said.

Jennifer Cowan is the Managing Editor for SiteProNews.

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