The recent quakes in Taiwan highlighted a lack of redundancy in the Pacific, where fiber runs have about half the capacity found across the Atlantic. A number of companies are planning to rectify that -- including Verizon, who is working with a number of companies to run an 11,000 mile, five terabits per second (Tbps) cable from the United States (Oregon) directly to mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea.

Google is also laying Pacific fiber as part of a consortium named Unity, formed alongside six international companies. The coalition is building a 6,200 mile, 7.68Tbps capable fiber run from Los Angeles to Chikura, located off the coast near Tokyo. Google today announced they finalized the deal on the $300 million project. According to the press release Trans-pacific bandwidth demand continues to surge:It's obviously a nice deal for Google, given the content operator gets access to bandwidth at build cost. NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications will build the fiber run starting immediately, and it should be completed by 2010, assuming that the undersea cable cutting bogeyman leaves them alone.