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Comment by dchuk | Hacker News Reader

That seems really cheap for such a crucial piece of infrastructure that has to wrap a quarter of the way around the earth

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If you read the article you would see that they are one of a number of partners. The project costs several billion US$. By 'buying in' like this you are given a dedicated portion of the bandwidth to use.

The NEC press release says the total amount of investment across six different companies is approximately $300mm

Facscinating, so now I'm completely confused. If they can pull this cable for 300M$US total that is a huge improvement in costs from previous efforts. Now I feel compelled to track down what changed that made this an order of magnitude less costly to do.

EDIT: this link http://submarinenetworks.com/systems/trans-pacific/unity informs me that I am completely wrong on the costs. Apparently it is really "only" 300M$ to lay a cable from here to there.

You're right. The press release [0] does say "The total amount of investment for the FASTER system is estimated to be approximately USD $300 million". That would, however, make the title of this article wrong.

I'm surprised Techcrunch made that big a mistake in their reporting.

[0] http://www.nec.com/en/press/201408/global_20140811_01.html

no, the title is accurate. it says "Google invests in $300mm cable", not "Google invests $300mm in cable"

While manufacturing the cable is expensive, actually laying it (in that particular part of the ocean) is not that challenging. They essentially just drive a ship along that path while slowly spooling out the cable from the rear. They have the advantage that that stretch of ocean doesn't contain much of anything to plan around.

Anyone interested in the process (or just loves captivating writing about technical subjects), read http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html. Can't recommend it enough.

It does, especially in comparison to the other number referenced in the article. Running a cable from Singapore to Japan cost $400mm, but running one from America to Japan costs $300mm?

The Southeast Asia-Japan cable links 8 countries, not just Singapore to Japan, and is nearly as long, with options to extend the total span to longer than the Japan-US cable.

Shallow waters, shipping channels, and landings cost way more than deep sea sections.

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