Google boosts its cloud with “highest-capacity undersea cable ever built”

Cable landing at Minami-boso city, Chiba, Japan (credit: NEC)

The Faster Cable System. (credit: NEC)

Google and five Asian telecoms have begun using an undersea cable connecting Oregon and Japan. At 60Tbps, "this is the highest-capacity undersea cable ever built," and Google will have access to 10Tbps of that, the company said in an announcement yesterday.

"We'll use this capacity to support our users, including Google Apps and Cloud Platform customers," the announcement said. "This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year. Dedicated bandwidth to this region results in faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe."

NEC is the supplier that built the $300 million "Faster Cable System" for Google, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and Singtel. It won't be the highest-capacity cable for very long, as Microsoft and Facebook recently announced a 160Tbps undersea cable from the US to Europe, to be completed in October 2017.

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