Google’s FASTER joins Japan, US with 60Tbps undersea cable

The ocean — yes, that big puddle on our planet’s surface — plays a pivotal part in our Facebook and Instagram selfie obsessions. Every day, millions of terabyes of data is transferred from place to play using cables buried beneath the sea bed.

Now, because the world definitely doesn’t have enough of these, Google (along with five other companies) recently switched on its latest cable — a 60Tbps monster spanning the Pacific, connecting Japan to mainland USA.

The aptly-named FASTER cable, and consortium, is the brainchild of “China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and Singtel,” the latter’s press release explains.

The 9000km-long cable was first announced last year, will land in Oregon state in the US, and Chiba and Mie prefectures in Japan. As a result, the cities near the landing areas — including much of America’s western seaboard, will benefit from the cable’s throughput.

That throughput also makes FASTER the, ahem, fastest undersea cable laid in the Pacific to date. You knew that was coming.

“From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, ‘faster, Faster and FASTER’, and at one point it became the project name and today it becomes a reality,” cable supplier NEC’s Hiromitsu Todokoro explains.