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Six-member consortium will lay the 10,000-mile, $300 million high-speed, fiber-optic cable

HONG KONG – 03/05/08 – Singapore Telecommunications, Internet giant Google, and four other companies plan to spend $300 million on an ultra-high speed, underwater communications cable covering the 10,000-plus miles between Los Angeles and the Japanese city of Chikura.

The cable – called Unity – will be on-line in 2010 and will also connect to other Asian telecommunications cable systems, reports the Voice of America in Hong Kong.

Fiber-optic cables are the lifelines for connecting Internet users on different continents.  This latest project is part of a surge in new transpacific cable construction projects, driven primarily by increasing demand in Asia.

According to industry analysts, Internet traffic between the US and Asia is expected to double within the next several years.

eMarketer, an Internet and e-business research company, predicts that by 2012, almost 50% of the world's Internet users will live in the Asia-Pacific region.

But, investments in undersea cable links are not without risk.In December 2006, a strong earthquake near Taiwan damaged four large offshore cables, disrupting Internet service for millions of people across Asia and service was not fully restored for weeks.

Earlier this year, communications in large parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia were affected after two undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean Sea.

In 2000, during the dot-com bust, several telecommunications companies went bankrupt when too many competitors entered the market.

One of the reasons most underwater cables are laid by consortiums, analysts say, is to lessen the risks for a single company.

At the rate the Asia Pacific's telecommunications market is forecast to expand, the financial attraction of such ventures, they say, far outweighs the potential risks.

The global Fiber optics industry is expected to grow in spite of high consolidation, says San Jose, California-based Global Industry Analysts Inc.

Optical fiber demand is primarily driven by increased demand for broadband Internet connections in North America and Asia, particularly China.

The US, the company says, represents the largest market for fiber optic components, with an estimated share of 39.02% of the global market last year.

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