The FASTER consortium has announced the launch of its new trans-Pacific subsea cable system.
Construction of the 9,000km system linking Japan and the west coast of the US has been completed an the cable is starting service today.
The six FASTER consortium members are Singtel, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI and Google. The cable was proided by NEC's submarine network division, making it the first trans-pacific subsea cable built solely by the vendor.
Designed using the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology, the FASTER cable can deliver 60Tbps of bandwidth over a six-fiber pair cable.
With the new cable the consortium aims to help meet the anticipated four-fold increase in demand for broadband traffic between Asia and North America.
The system has two landing stations in Japan, in the Chiba and Mie prefectures, which provide easy access to Japan's major cities. It connects to multiple neighboring cable systems to extend the cable's capacity to other Asian locations.
“From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, ‘faster, Faster and FASTER’, and at one point it became the project name and today it becomes a reality,” FASTER management committee chairman Horimitsu Todokoro said.
“This is the outcome of six members’ collaborative contribution and expertise together with NEC’s support.”