Pacnet (亞太環通) yesterday unveiled a joint investment project with Google and four other global firms to build an undersea cable connecting Japan and the US to meet growing trans-Pacific bandwidth demand.
Pacnet said its planned trans-Pacific cable — to be known as EAC Pacific — connecting Los Angeles, California and Chikura, Japan, would be part of a 10,000km undersea Unity cable system, which it is building with Google, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit KDDI and SingTel.
“This [10,000km] network that goes into Japan will be connected to our [36,800km] EAC-C2C network, making it a 46,800km network,” Pacnet CEO William Barney told reporters at a luncheon.
The company’s EAC-C2C network is Asia’s largest privately owned submarine cable network, which carries up to 10.24 terabits per second (Tbps).
“This network [EAC Pacific] will be up in the first quarter of 2010,” Barney said.
The firm estimates that EAC Pacific will cost around US$300 million (NT$9.9 billion) to build and provide up to 1.92Tbps of capacity.
Pacnet was formed in January from the merger of Asia Netcom (亞洲網通) and Pacific Internet (太平洋寬頻). The company has 2,000 employees worldwide and is headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Pacnet is the largest independent telecommunications service provider in Asia.