Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Google Involved in Trans-Pacific Cable Construction

Google is a member of a consortium for constructing a new trans-pacific cable system named "Unity". This 10,000km cable system, connecting Tokyo and LA, has a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps and is estimated to cost US$300 million. It's expected to be in operation by early 2010.

According to KDDI, a member of this consortium and a tier-1 provider in Japan, each member of the consortium will individually operate a fiber pair. Wow! So, Google is probably going to have its very own 960 Gbps hard link between its two offices across the pacific. I wonder what Google is going to do with this. Hopefully it's not just for TelePresence...

Interesting how a software company like Google can suddenly get deeply involved in a network infrastructure business. Of course this is nothing new; Wi-Fi access is another one Google is involved it and potentially wireless mobile services. More reasons for telcos to get scared of software giants.

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