Making Google a little bit faster across Asia

Did you notice your email sending just a bit faster this morning? Maybe your favorite YouTube video loaded more quickly? Or perhaps your BigQuery result returned even faster than usual? Well, that could be because we've just started bringing a new high-speed undersea cable online in Asia. Back in June, the six-member FASTER Consortium began beaming light through the FASTER cable, the world's fastest fiber optic undersea cable to date, which connects the United States and Japan. We wanted to spread this lightning fast connectivity a little bit farther, though. So, to extend the benefits of this Trans-Pacific link to the rest of Asia, we invested in a cable that links FASTER in Japan on to Taiwan, where our largest data center in Asia provides millions of people across Asia with quick access to our tools and services, at speeds of up to 26 terabits per second. But wait, what does 26 terabits per second even mean?

You may not notice right away, but this new cable should help Google products and services load more quickly across the region. It should also improve the reliability and consistency of this speedier experience, since the cable was strategically built outside of tsunami zones to help prevent network outages related to natural disasters. With more people coming online every day in Asia than anywhere else in the world, we've been working hard to invest in the infrastructure needed to make the Internet work for all of us who live in the region. That's why we've built two data centers in the region and have already expanded our facility in Singapore. It's also why we're investing in these undersea cables – to make everyone's computing just a bit faster and to bring people around the world just a bit closer together. Article by Yan Tang, network resource APAC regional lead, Google