According to TechCrunch, Google announced plans to join five other companies in an a project to build a faster connection between Japan and the U.S.

Google today announced that it is joining a consortium of five other companies to build and operate FASTER, a new trans-Pacific cable system that will connect Japan to the west coast of the U.S. with initial speeds of up to 60 Tb/s. Other members of the consortium include China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI and SingTel. NEC will be the system supplier.

1101-01As Google’s vice president for its technical infrastructure Urs Hölzle writes on Google+ today, the company is making this investment to ensure that its products are fast and reliable, “and that requires a great network infrastructure, whether it’s for the more than a billion Android users or developers building products on Google Cloud Platform.”