After investing in the Unity trans-Pacific submarine cable, Google (News - Alert) is working with a consortium of carriers planning to build an intra-Asian submarine cable system as well. The new cable, dubbed the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), will link Unity's landing station in Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.

 

The cable is still in the planning stage. "Given the current flurry of undersea cables under construction, the SJC cable will probably not be ready for service until 2011 at the earliest," says TeleGeography analyst Alan Mauldin.

 

The members of the SJC consortium are nearly identical to Unity with a few exceptions. Companies that are participating in both consortia are Google, Bharti, SingTel, KDDI (News - Alert) and Global Transit.

 

Pacnet, which will control two fiber pairs on Unity, already operates the EAC-C2C intra-Asian mesh cable system and consequently is not involved with SJC. Globe Telecom (News - Alert) of the Philippines and TOT of Thailand are also members of SJC and will be the landings parties for the cable in their respective countries.

 

There are lots of way Google and other application providers do compete with telecom or cable service providers. But in this case, Google simply is assuring itself low-cost bandwidth, much as enterprises sometimes buy dark fiber for their own use, instead of buying fully turned-up services.