Google and Asian telcos plot largest ever subsea cable

KDDI, Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Google yesterday signed a letter of intent to build a $400 million subsea cable between India and Japan.

 

The 6-fiber-pair Asia-Pacific Japan Cable will have a design capacity of 17 Tbps – the highest capacity cable ever planned – and will be upgradeable to 23 Tbps, the companies said in a joint statement. 

 

The 8,300-km cable will initially link Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, and Japan.

 

The announcement comes days after Pacnet said it was seeking partners for a $150 million cable between Chennai and Singapore.

 

The other initiating parties are the Philippines' Globe Telecom, cable system operator Network i2i - a JV between Bharti Airtel and SingTel - and Telemedia Pacific, which operates in Hong Kong and Indonesia.

 

More companies have signaled an intent to participate once the project gets off the ground, the statement said. The cable should be operational by the second quarter of 2012.

 

If it goes ahead, it would be Google’s second cable investment. Along with Bharti Airtel, SingTel and KDDI, it was an investor in the Unity cable which landed in Japan last month.