Google's Asian Infrastructure Ambitions

TeleGeography reports that Google will participate in a consortium building a new intra-Asian submarine cable system. The Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), would bolster connectivity in Japan to Guam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. In February Google announced plans to partner with five other companies in building the Unity undersea communications cable across the Pacific, which marked the first time an Internet company has invested in a trans-oceanic cable.

The new report meshes with earlier news about Google's extensive scouting of potential data center locations in Asia. The company is said to have looked at potential sites in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, India and even Vietnam. We had speculated that the search giant was pitting Asian governments against one another to gain the best incentives for a major data center project, but the breadth of the search could also suggest that Google will build several facilities. Do the landing points for the new cable offer any hints about where we'll see new Google data centers? Or when? The Unity cable will be finished in 2010, while the SJC timetable calls for 2011 completion.