Google Takes Stake in $300 Million Dollar ‘Faster’ Trans-Pacific Undersea Cable Project
Google is aggressively working to improve the speed with which we access the Internet. Google Fiber is one of its better-known efforts because it directly benefits regular users: Google Fiber provides the citizens of many major U.S. cities with affordable Gigabit Internet access. Now, the company is joining forces with other tech companies to build FASTER, an undersea cable system that will transfer data between the West coast and Japan at speeds that are, as Google’s Urs Hölzle points out in a Google+ post, “About ten million times faster than your cable modem.”
FASTER will run from Chikura and Shima in Japan to the West Coast, where it will feed hubs in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. The project, which is estimated to cost $300 million, will be started soon with an expected completion date in the first half of 2016. The consortium includes NEC among other major tech companies.
This isn’t the first major undersea project Google has undertaken. The company was involved in the UNITY submarine communications cable, which was installed in 2008.
FASTER will run from Chikura and Shima in Japan to the West Coast, where it will feed hubs in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. The project, which is estimated to cost $300 million, will be started soon with an expected completion date in the first half of 2016. The consortium includes NEC among other major tech companies.
This isn’t the first major undersea project Google has undertaken. The company was involved in the UNITY submarine communications cable, which was installed in 2008.
