Mumbai: Bharti Airtel is joining a consortium, which includes Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel to form the Unity Bandwidth Consortium that will build a high bandwidth undersea fibre-optic cable linking Asia and the US. The cost of building the cable would be approximately $300 million (Rs1,200 crore).

Unity will carry data and Internet traffic between Asia and the US.NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications have been selected to construct and install the system.

Bharti Airtel said in a release that the construction of the cable system will begin "immediately" while initial capacity would be available in the first quarter of 2010.

David Nishball, president, enterprise services, Bharti Airtel, said: "This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our international footprint across the globe to provide seamless connectivity to customers through partnerships with leading global companies.

The Unity cable system will address the demand for increased bandwidth between Asia and the US as more and more services migrate to an online environment. This partnership will also provide alternate routes to meet the demands of our customers for increased levels of network resiliency and redundancy."

The setting up of the cable is expected to initially increase Trans-Pacific operational cable capacity by about 20 per cent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 terabits per second of bandwidth across the Pacific, according to Unity.

According to a spokesperson Unity the Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online, giving users faster and more reliable connectivity.

The cable will be 10,000 kilometers long and would run between Chikura, off the coast of Tokyo, to Los Angeles and points on the West Coast, Unity said. The system will handle between five and eight fiber pairs, each of which can carry up to 960 Gbps.

Google said it was joining the consortium because the volume of data it needs to move around the world has grown to the point where it is beyond the ability of traditional players to offer the required services. It added that its involvement with Unity does not mean that it is going into the undersea cable business.
Bandwidth demand is expected to roughly double every two years between 2008 and 2012, according to the 2007 Telegeography Bandwidth Report.

According to a Telegeography report other such undersea cables are expected to be set up between the U.S., China, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea on the Trans-Pacific Express Cable System (TPE) in August 2008, while the Asia-America Gateway Cable System will provide service between the U.S. and several Southern Asian countries beginning in Q1 2009. Reliance FLAG (formerly FLAG Telecom) is also planning such a system.