With Google being one of, if not the most dominant presences on the web right now, it makes perfect sense for them to want internet connectivity to be as fast and reliable as possible. In this regard, rather than take a back seat and assume that someone else will improve the worldwide levels of access speed and data transfer they have been at the forefront of upgrading.
The last week of June saw the highest capacity undersea internet cable ever laid go live. Google, in conjunction with five other partner companies, designed, created and laid the 9000km cable between Japan and the west coast of North America. The cable was laid at a rate of approximately 200km per day, and features a strengthened protective layer protecting the data wires. More protection for undersea cables was identified as a priority after a spate of shark attacks on them, something which saw a dramatic fall in worldwide web services.
Faster is the name given to the new US-Japan cable, and it’s hard to argue with the validity of this christening. The new fibre cable has the ability to carry data at a rate of sixty million Mbps. Reaching this speed was viewed as a crucial success factor for the project. The high speed in place is expected to give a considerable boost to cross Pacific traffic, in particular with respect to cloud computing and storage.
Google are, of course, not the only giant reliant on the web, and are not alone in boosting worldwide internet connectivity. In a project which in many respects mirrors this one, a joint effort between Microsoft and Facebook has been announced to lay a 6500km cable between the east coast of America and mainland Spain.
Whilst it’s obviously in the best interests of companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook to have better and faster internet connections in place, ultimately everyone ends up a winner from the presence of these new cables. The increasing speed of connectivity made possible by the new services allows for the further growth of cloud based services whilst encouraging the development of more innovative ways to harness the power of the web.