Google extends transpacific FASTER fiber optic cable to its largest Asian data center, in Taiwan

It took Google and others two years to lay its FASTER high-speed fiber optic cable along the bottom of the Pacific ocean, connecting the U.S. to Japan, and it has today extended that cable to Taiwan.

The extension offers a connection speed of 26 terabits per second, which Google says would allow 138 billion selfies a day to be transmitted between Japan and Taiwan. If that seems a little excessive, the reason for the capacity is that Google’s largest data center in Asia is based in Taiwan, meaning that the entire region should benefit.

As with the original cable, Google had to be careful to avoid tsunami zones when routing the cable.

You may not notice right away, but this new cable should help Google products and services load more quickly across the region. It should also improve the reliability and consistency of this speedier experience, since the cable was strategically built outside of tsunami zones to help prevent network outages related to natural disasters.

That should provide greater resilience when other connections in the region are severed by tsunamis.