Google Buys a Piece of a Cable To Japan

Googling Yourself writes "Google announced that they will be part of a six-company consortium that will build a high-bandwidth sub-sea fiber optic cable linking the US and Japan. The new cable system, named Unity, is expected initially to increase Trans-Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second of bandwidth across the Pacific. The name Unity was chosen to signify a new type of consortium, born out of potentially competing systems, to emerge as a system within a system, offering ownership and management of individual fiber pairs. Rumors that Google would join the consortium had originally surfaced in September last year but the company had declined to confirm or deny the news."

how many strands

[seanadams.com]

in such a cable?

And how do you figure out the optimal capacity to install anyway? To me 7 Tbits does not sounds like much to link two whole countries. Surely there is some point of diminishing returns, but why not more than this?

Good news all around if it happens

[Psychotria]

[...] sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States. [...](will) increase Trans-Pacific lit (sic) cable capacity by about 20 percent

Seems pretty significant. Additionally I wonder how this will affect other countries within the Pacific region... in particular (because I reside there) Australia. It is a fairly short hop from Japan to Australia, and hopefully at some point the increased bandwidth is extended.

At Chikura, Unity will be seamlessly connected to other cable systems, further enhancing connectivity into Asia.

This statement seems to at least allure to increased bandwidth to all nearby nations, including I suppose nations not "Asian"; e.g. China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and maybe New Zealand. This, of course, is pure conjecture on my part; but a new link to Japan, while being great for Japan, may be just a stepping stone onto even bigger things. My globe just shrunk a little bit more.

Well, yes

[Psychotria]

Interesting points. For a (not entirely off-topic) good read on the lost fortunes and tenacity of individuals making a transatlantic cable reality, I'd recommend A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by J.S.Gordon. The first cable (not fiber-optic of course) was a pain in the butt for all. As far as I know, the lessons learned in those pioneering days are still important. This [wikipedia.org] contains some interesting info on those pioneering days.

BTW I'm willing to bet Google will join another club on this route to add some much needed redundancy.

I am willing to bet you're right.

Re:Bandwidth

[RuBLed]

I guess so... Japan got around 130 million people and considering the land area of the country it could only mean a greater population density. Ads love greater population densities. Imagine serving ads on public places, in trains and buses, and even on the weird personal gadgets that they always carry. (like their mobile tv on a DS)

and better yet, they could make it video ads... (if not video ads, then at least youtube could better endure the influx of japanese anime and japanese game shows)