Google's Pacific Ocean cable close to completion

Google is reported to be almost ready to start using a new high-speed internet cable under the Pacific Ocean to increase lit cable capacity by around 20 percent.

The new cable, dubbed Unity, will give Google a direct connection to the Asian market from the US to potentially handle 7.68 Terabits/s and offer Asian internet users faster browsing speeds.

The project was funded to the tune of US$300m (A$327m) by Google and a consortium of six Asian telecommunication firms known as The Unity Consortium.

The six firms are Singapore Telecommunications, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation and Pacnet.

Google said in a statement today that the growing demand for access to information had made investment in the new pipeline a necessity.

"As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience, regardless of geography," it said.

The new underwater cable will offer connections between Google's Japanese and US datacentres, enabling it to offer improved services to Asian customers and guarantee it access to a large amount of new bandwidth to help it meet growing user demands.

The pipe's completion comes at a time when Google looks set to pull out of Asia's biggest market, China, something it probably didn't envisage doing when it first announced the Unity project two years ago.