Google may partner Anil Ambani for sub-sea cable project

Internet giant, Google is beefing up the infrastructure to make use of rising internet usage across globe especially in Asia-Pacific regions by setting up its own under-sea cable across Pacific, under a project called Unity. This would help Google to meet its data and video transfer requirements from US to Asian countries.

Reliance Communication’s Flag Telecom is believed to have initiated a talk with Google to take a stake in its trans-Pacific cable project between United States west coast and Far East Asia on a long term lease. Flag Telecom is investing around Rs 1,400-1,500 crore for the trans-pacific cable route.

Google is believed to take 500 GB bandwidth for around Rs. 400 crore. This would also help Flag Telecom to reduce its capital expenditure by around 16% and also get a reputed partner for its communication project.

Google itself has a huge bank of “dark fiber” (unused fiber-optic cable connections), which it bought in 2001 post slump in technology business at discounted prices. Thus, Google now only needs to invest in lighting up the cable giving it a self-managed and secure network. 

If the deal materialises, it would lead to substantial cost saving for Google as it would prevent it from duplicating the network as the service areas are same. Also, Flag could buy some “dark fiber” from Google while Google could in turn buy and manage the bandwidth from Flag Telecom.
 
Trans-Pacific cable is particularly prized at the moment for two reasons: The dearth of existing undersea cable in the region and the huge swell in bandwidth demand coming out of Asia.