The Google-invested Unity trans-Pacific cable landed in Japan and will be ready for service in Q1 2010.
The final splice of the 4.8 Tbps million cable will be made off the coast of Japan in the coming two weeks, the consortium said in a press release.
The $300 million cable – Google’s first direct investment in telecom bandwidth – is also invested by Asian carriers SingTel, PacNet, Bharti Airtel and KDDI.
The new cable was built by NEC Corp and Tyco Telecom and will provide connectivity between Chikura, located off the coast near Tokyo, to Los Angeles and other West Coast network PoPs. Each fiber pair on the cable has a capacity of up to 960 Gbps.
Trans-Pacific bandwidth demand grew at a CAGR of 62.8% between 2002 and 2008, and is forecast to grow tenfold between 2008 to 2013, according to TeleGeography.