Unity Cable System completed across Pacific

APRIL 1, 2010 -- Unity, a consortium of six international companies, together with its suppliers NEC Corp. and TE SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecommunications), say that the 9,620-km trans-Pacific Unity submarine cable system has successfully completed comprehensive end-to-end testing and is now ready for service.

“Following months of testing to ensure that the cable system meets the rigorous transmission standards specified, the Unity cable system is now ready to deliver the much anticipated capacity to meet the trans-Pacific connectivity needs of members of the consortium,” said Chris Wilson, chairman of the Unity Executive Committee.

The Unity cable system provides direct connectivity between Chikura, located on the Japanese coast near Tokyo, and West Coast network points-of-presence in Los Angeles, Palo Alto, and San Jose. At Chikura, Unity is connected to other cable systems to enhance connectivity into Asia.

The five fiber pair Unity cable system is designed to deliver up to 4.8 Tbps of bandwidth across the Pacific, with each fiber pair having a capacity of up to 960 Gbps.

Construction of the system was first announced in February 2008 by the Unity consortium which comprises Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corp., Pacnet, and SingTel. The Unity cable system was constructed at a cost of approximately $300 million.

The name Unity was chosen to signify a new type of consortium, born out of potentially competing systems, to emerge as a system within a system, offering ownership and management of individual fiber pairs.