60 Tbps FASTER cable, linking US West Coast with Japan, and backed by Google and several telecom companies, begins service
A new undersea internet cable funded in part by Google and connecting Japan with the US is slated to go online starting June 30th.
Context & Ripple Effects
FASTER going live on June 30th marks Google's arrival as an owner of transpacific infrastructure rather than a tenant on telecom carriers' networks — a 60 Tbps pipe it co-funded with several telecom partners to feed traffic between its US and Japanese operations.
The move kicked off a buildout that has only accelerated since: Google went on to join the LA–Hong Kong Pacific Light Cable project with Facebook, invest in the Japan-Guam-Australia system for Southeast Asia routes, and light up the 250 Tbps Dunant cable across the Atlantic.
First-order effects
- US–Japan transpacific capacity jumps to 60 Tbps overnight, giving Google and its telecom co-investors dedicated bandwidth for cloud and consumer traffic between the two markets instead of leased carrier circuits.
Second-order effects
- Rivals respond in kind rather than rent: SoftBank, Facebook, and Amazon announce their own 60 Tbps Japan route via the Jupiter consortium cable, and Facebook joins Google on the LA–Hong Kong line — hyperscalers are now each other's competitors in submarine construction.
Third-order effects
- Per-cable capacity keeps escalating along the pattern this story starts (60 Tbps here, 120 on the Hong Kong route, 250 on Dunant), while Google's later $1B Pacific connectivity investment shows the shift hardening into structure: content platforms owning the physical layer that carriers used to monopolize.
The trend: Hyperscalers are converting from bandwidth customers into owners of the global subsea backbone, with each new consortium cable raising the capacity baseline.