Google is about to get a little more capacity to satisfy its ever-increasing hunger for bandwidth. A high-speed Trans-Pacific Internet cable, in which it was a significant investor, is now completed and is expected to go into service in the next few months, Cnet reports. The project, which has been in the works for the past couple of years, is getting close to wrapping up testing.
The cable has been deployed by the Unity Consortium, a joint-venture between Google and several major ISPs and telcos with interest in the area, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel. The project, which links Japan to the US via an under-sea cable, had an estimated cost of $300 million in the planning phase.
Things are in the final stretch with testing of the infrastructure close to an end. Google is expected to announce the completion of the project next week, but it has only provided a canned response for now.
"The need for information is a global requirement. As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the Internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience regardless of geography," a Google representative
told Cnet.
At launch, the Unity Consortium cable is expected to increase bandwidth between the US and Asia by an estimated 20 percent and the figure may grow as more capacity is enabled. The cable will send and receive up to 7.68 Terabits per second (Tbps) of data from one side of the Pacific to the other.
Google invested an undisclosed amount in the project and, in return, is said to be getting as much as 20 percent of the capacity for its own services, depending on its needs. Google is likely the biggest traffic source in the world and operates some of the most visited sites on the planet. YouTube alone consumes a huge amount of bandwidth serving more than one billion videos every day.
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