Google Teams With Asian Telecoms For “Faster” Undersea Cable

Google is intent on enhancing global Internet connectivity by expanding bandwidth. A joint effort between the technology behemoth and five of Asia’s top telecommunications companies aims to construct a new fiber optic cable installed beneath the Pacific Ocean, stretching from Japan to the United States, with a capacity to transfer up to 60 terabytes of data per second.

The new infrastructure, aptly named Faster, matches the ambitions of its founders—increased speed for data transmission between the United States and Asia, a path along which data traffic balloons continually. According to projections from Cisco’s latest Virtual Networking Index, by 2018, IP traffic in the Asia Pacific region should hit 47.3 exabytes monthly, tripling the figures recorded in 2013. The VNI’s projections suggest, “By 2018, the gigabyte equivalent of every film ever made will traverse Asia Pacific’s IP networks every seven minutes.”

When operational, Faster would augment nearly 300 comparable cables presently responsible for conveying approximately 95 percent of all global Internet traffic. The estimated cost of the six-fiber-pair cable is $300 million, and it’s expected to be functional by 2016. The cable’s path starts from two locations in Japan—Chikura city in Chiba Prefecture, and Shima city in Mie Prefecture—and culminates in the western coastline of the United States, branching out to significant cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

Building new cables to accommodate increasing online traffic is typically within the purview of Internet service providers; nevertheless, this isn’t Google’s initial venture into this sector. Previously, Google contributed to the construction of the Unity cable, connecting the United States and Japan along a similar route as the Faster cable, establishing service in 2010. In the fabrication of Faster, Google collaborates with KDDI, Global Transit, China Mobile International, China Telecome Global, and SingTel firms.

The Japanese IT firm NEC Corporation, also part of the Unity initiative, is chosen to spearhead the Faster project. According to Woohyong Choi, chairman of Faster’s executive committee in a press release, “The Faster cable system boasts the largest design capacity ever developed on the Trans-Pacific route, one of the world’s longest routes. The agreement made public today will advantage all global Internet users.”

The source of the content comes from Ian Chant at IEEE Spectrum.

Minor enhancements were applied in 2025 for readability.