Google wants to boost Internet speed with China Mobile, China Telecom, SingTel

Online search engine Google has joined hands with five companies — China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel – to kick off a $300 million underwater cable system, named Faster, with a capacity of 60 terabits per second.

The main objective of the submarine fiber optic cable network is to boost the speed of Internet, one of the main tools for the faster growth of Google and several billion citizens in Asia and other parts of the world. The connection speed is roughly 10 million times faster than a cable modem.

The network will connect two coastal locations in Japan with major US cities in the West Coast, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

“We want our products to be fast and reliable, and that requires a great network infrastructure, whether it’s for the more than a billion Android users or developers building products on Google Cloud Platform,” said Urs Holzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure at Google.

Google said the construction is expected to begin soon. Google is hoping to bring the cable system into operation in the second quarter of 2016.

China Mobile International, a Hong Kong-based arm of China Mobile, said the company plans to further strengthen network coverage and enable CMI to provide continuous and superior Internet connectivity and voice and data services to its customers.

Google on Airtel phones

The exact investment by the Chinese companies wasn’t disclosed. Nearly 75 percent of mobile phone subscribers in China were using China Mobile or China Telecom services by the end of last year. Besides 4G, China is one of the fastest growing 3G markets in the world.

The country’s mobile Internet user base totaled 500 million in 2013, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

China will have 30 million 4G users by the end of 2014, just a year after the technology was launched in China, the MIIT estimated.

China is important for the growth of Google. IDC says China is the world’s largest Android phone market. Google’s operating system accounts for about 80 percent of the Chinese smartphone market in terms of installation rates. Many Android users in China are shifting to 4G networks, which require swifter connection speeds.

Earlier, CEOs of Apple and Nokia made several visits to China because of the rapidly growing smartphone market.

[email protected]