A consortium of six companies – including four major APAC operators and Google – have teamed up to build a new $300 million subsea cable linking the US and Japan.
The group – consisting of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, KDDI, SingTel, Google and Malaysia-based IP transit operator Global Transit - have commissioned the new FASTER cable.
FASTER will use six-fiber-pair cable to deliver an initial design capacity of 60 Tbps. NEC will act as the system supplier.
The system will land at Chikura and Shima in Japan, connecting on to neighboring cable systems. In the US, it will cover the major West Coast hubs of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Construction of the cable system is set to commence immediately, and NEC aims to ensure it is ready for service during the second quarter of 2016.
Woohyong Choi, chairman of the FASTER executive committee, said the cable system will have the highest design capacity ever built on a trans-Pacific route. “The agreement announced today will benefit all users of the global internet,” he said.
Ooi Seng, president of carrier services for SingTel's enterprise group, added that the system will be able to transmit the equivalent of 12,000 HD movies per second.