New Cable UNITY

Google's subsea ambitions expand

On the heels of its investment in the Unity trans-Pacific submarine cable, Google is working with a consortium of carriers planning to build an intra-Asian submarine cable system. The new cable, dubbed the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), would link Unity's landing station in Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. The cable is still in the planning stage, and the consortium has yet to announce a supply contract (boleh caya ke??). 'Given the current flurry of undersea cables under construction, the SJC cable will probably not be ready for service until 2011(lama nye.. AAG dah RFS around next year) at the earliest,' said TeleGeography analyst Alan Mauldin.The members of the SJC consortium are nearly identical to Unity with a few exceptions. Companies that are participating in both consortiam are Google, Bharti, SingTel, KDDI and Global Transit. Pacnet, which will control two fibre pairs on Unity, already operates the EAC-C2C intra-Asian mesh cable system and consequently is not involved with SJC. Globe Telecom of the Philippines and TOT of Thailand are also members of SJC and will be the landings parties for the cable in their respective countries.