Google and Asian firms laying US-Japan underwater cable

TOKYO, Aug 12 (AFP) :  Google is partnering with five Asian telecom firms to build a $300 million underwater cable across the Pacific Ocean in a bid to meet surging Internet use.
The project, named FASTER, would see the 9,000-kilometre (5,600 mile) fibre-optic cable stretch from two points in Japan to the United States, with extensions to other Asian locations later on, the companies said. In the US, the cable would be extended to link major cities on the west coast including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, they said.
There are several hundred underwater telecom cables that connect various points in the world.
But "the FASTER cable system has the largest design capacity ever built on the Trans-Pacific route, which is one of the longest routes in the world", Woohyong Choi, chairman of the project's executive committee, said in the statement.