Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Unity Cable System Completed, Boosts Trans-Pacific Connectivity

The 9,620km submarine cable system linking Japan and the West Coast of the US completes testing and is ready for service

31 March 2010 – USA / 1 April 2010 – Asia – Unity, a consortium of six international companies, together with its suppliers NEC Corporation and TE SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecommunications), today announced that the Trans-Pacific Unity submarine cable system has successfully completed comprehensive end-to-end testing and is now ready for service.

“Following months of testing to ensure that the cable system meets the rigorous transmission standards specified, the Unity cable system is now ready to deliver the much anticipated capacity to meet the Trans-Pacific connectivity needs of members of the consortium,” said Chris Wilson, Chairman of the Unity Executive Committee.

The Unity cable system provides direct connectivity between Chikura, located on the coast near Tokyo, and West Coast network Points-of-Presence in Los Angeles, Palo Alto and San Jose. At Chikura, Unity is seamlessly connected to other cable systems, further enhancing connectivity into Asia.

Through the deployment of state-of-the-art submarine cable technology, the five fiber pair Unity cable system is designed to deliver up to 4.8 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific, with each fiber pair having a capacity of up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps).

Construction of the system was first announced in February 2008 by the Unity consortium which comprises of Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel. The Unity cable system was constructed at a cost of approximately US$300 million.

The name Unity was chosen to signify a new type of consortium, born out of potentially competing systems, to emerge as a system within a system, offering ownership and management of individual fiber pairs.

About Unity

Unity is an international consortium that developed the 9,620 km undersea cable system connecting Japan and the United States. The system provides much needed capacity to sustain the increased growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States. Members of the consortium include Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI, Pacnet and SingTel. NEC Corporation and TE SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecommunications) are the main suppliers for the Unity project.

About Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is among Asia’s leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In South Asia, the company had an aggregate of over 134 million customers as of end February 2010, including 124.6 million mobile customers in India. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek. Bharti Airtel is structured as four strategic business units – Mobile, Telemedia, Enterprise and Digital TV. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtel’s national high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 118,337 Rkms across India. Airtel’s international network infrastructure includes ownership of the i2i submarine cable system and consortium ownership in five global undersea cable systems, SEA-ME-WE 4, EIG, I-ME-WE, AAG and UNITY.

About Global Transit

Global Transit is part of a Kuala Lumpur based telecommunications group with a specific focus on providing robust wholesale and enterprise services. Its investments include TIME dotCom, an infrastructure rich carrier & Malaysia’s No 2 fixed line operator. Global Transit was founded in 2005 by a small group of technology entrepreneurs.

About Google

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

About KDDI

KDDI is the only Japanese information and communications company that comprehensively provides all communications services, from fixed to mobile. KDDI is aggressively working towards realization of the coming Ubiquitous Network Society through its ability to develop leading-edge fixed and mobile communications networks, and services to support them, and through the ability to carry out technical R&D; at a level unsurpassed anywhere.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation has devoted more than 100 years of technological innovation to serving people around the world. The NEC Group’s concept of a “C&C; Cloud” integrates Computers with Communications and provides services that contribute to the advancement of society, individuals and business. NEC combines IT and network technologies to deploy solutions with the scalability, capability and affordability to meet the complex and ever-changing needs of business and to empower society.

About Pacnet

Pacnet is Asia’s leading independent telecommunications service provider, formed from the operational merger of Asia Netcom and Pacific Internet. Pacnet owns and operates EAC-C2C, the region’s largest privately-owned submarine cable network at 36,800 km, with a design capacity of 10.24 Tbps. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of industry leading IP-based solutions for carriers, large enterprises and SMEs. Pacnet is headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore, with offices across Asia and in the US and Europe.

About SingTel

SingTel is Asia’s leading communications group providing a portfolio of services including voice and data solutions over fixed, wireless and Internet platforms as well as infocomm technology and pay TV. It has a network of 37 offices in 20 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States. Together with its regional partners, SingTel is Asia’s largest multi-market mobile operator, serving more than 285 million mobile customers in eight markets.

About TE SubCom

TE SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecommunications), a business unit of Tyco Electronics and an industry pioneer in undersea communications technology and marine services, is a leading global supplier for today’s undersea communications requirements. Drawing on its heritage of technical innovation and industry recognized performance, the company delivers the most reliable, high-quality solutions to organizations with undersea communications needs vital to their core mission. In more than five decades of operation, TE SubCom has designed, manufactured, and installed more than 100 undersea fiber optic systems around the world.

Media Contacts:

Bharti Airtel
Sandipan Ghatak
Tel: +91 124 4243052
Fax: +91 124 4243252
Mob: +91 9810776182
sandipan.g@airtel.in
www.airtel.in

Global Transit
Mah Siew Yan
Tel : +603 2031 4988 ext 337
Fax : +603 2031 8948
siewyan.mah@globaltransit.net
www.globaltransit.net

Google
Yoshi Funabashi / Jake Hubert
Tel: +81 (3)6415-5842 / +1 650 488 4807
funabashi@google.com/ jakehubert@google.com
www.google.com

KDDI
Shin-ichiro Itoyama
Public Relations Department
Tel: +81-3-6678-0690
www.kddi.com
www.kddi.com/english/index.html

NEC
Joseph Jasper
Corporate Communications Division
Tel: +81 (0)3 3798 6511
j-jasper@ax.jp.nec.com
www.nec.com

Pacnet
Lorain Wong / Roland Lim
Tel: +852 2121 2973 / +852 2121 2975
lorain.wong@pacnet.com/ roland.lim@pacnet.com
www.pacnet.com

SingTel
Dylan Tan
Corporate Communications Manager
Tel: +65 6838 8772
dylantan@singtel.com
www.singtel.com

TE SubCom
Courtney McDaniel
Tel: +1 973 656 8000
info@tycotelecom.com
www.tycotelecom.com

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Google Announces Internet Availability of Proxy Materials for its 2010 Annual Meeting of Stockholders

Mountain View, Calif. – March 30, 2010 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Internet availability of proxy materials for its 2010 Annual Meeting of stockholders under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Notice and Access rule. Google’s proxy materials can be found on its investor relations website at investor.google.com/proxy.html.

Pursuant to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Notice and Access rule, companies may satisfy their proxy materials delivery requirements by delivering a "Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy Materials" to stockholders, providing Internet access to the proxy materials, and providing a printed set of proxy materials by mail to any stockholder who requests them. Google has elected to take full advantage of these rules in order to minimize impact on the environment and maximize cost savings relating to the printing of the proxy materials.

Google’s 2009 Annual Report on Form 10-K and proxy statement for its 2010 Annual Meeting of stockholders have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and may be viewed on Google’s website at investor.google.com/proxy.html. Google’s stockholders may obtain hard copies of these proxy materials free of charge by following the instructions provided on its website or in the "Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy Materials".

Google’s 2010 Annual Meeting of stockholders will be held on Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 2:00 p.m., local time, at Google’s corporate headquarters at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043. For your convenience, we are pleased to offer a live webcast of the Annual Meeting and Google Moderator to allow you to propose questions for the question-and-answer portion of the Annual Meeting at investor.google.com/questions.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Contacts:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650.253.7663
marias@google.com

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Google and AdSense are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Grab Your Bike and Go with Google Maps

Announcement
March 10, 2010

Users can now choose biking when deciding how to get to their destination

March 10, 2010 – If you’re one of the 57 million Americans who ride a bike, mapping your daily commute, exploring new trails, and planning recreational rides just became a little bit easier. Google is announcing that we have added biking directions in the U.S. to Google Maps. This has been the most requested addition to Google Maps, and we’re delighted to be unveiling this new feature at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC.

This new feature includes: step-by-step bicycling directions; bike trails outlined directly on the map; and a new “Bicycling” layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads.

The directions feature provides step-by-step, bike-specific routing suggestions – similar to the directions provided by our driving, walking, or public transit modes. Simply enter a start point and destination and select “Bicycling" from the drop-down menu. You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible. Just like Google pioneered with driving directions, you can click-and-drag your route to customize it as you’d like. You can also access the other features in Google Maps, such as Street View, so you can tell exactly where you might need to turn on your route or preview how wide a bike lane is, and Local Search, so you know where you can take a water break or where the bike shops are along your route. Biking directions provides time estimates for routes based on an algorithm that takes into account the length of the route, the number of hills, fatigue over time, and other variables.

The new bicycling layer for Google Maps, accessible via the “More…” drop down menu at the top of the map, will display an overlay of the various bike-friendly roads and trails around town. The layer is color-coded to show three different types of paths:

  • Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
  • Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
  • Dotted green indicates roads without bike lanes but are more appropriate for biking, based on factors such as terrain, traffic, and intersections.

Thousands of miles of trails in the US have also been added directly onto the map. This helps cyclists better plan their routes, and can also expose the availability and convenience of bike trails to a new audience. Maybe you’re planning a trip to Seattle and notice that the Burke-Gilman trail goes right past your hotel and decide to do an afternoon bike tour of the city, or maybe you notice a trail that will make your daily bike-to-work commute safer and more scenic.

Google has partnered with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit that creates networks of trails from former rail lines, to provide information on bike trails in more than 150 cities.

“The demand for trail maps and information has never been higher, especially as more people recognize biking as a viable, inexpensive and healthy alternative to driving,” says Rails-to-Trails President Keith Laughlin. “Sharing our trail data is an exceptional way to introduce the world to what 150,000 RTC members and supporters already know—biking is the ideal way to get where you’re going. The addition of biking directions to Google Maps makes life easier for bikers, whether they are commuting to work or biking for fun, and it can introduce our network of trails to a whole new audience of cyclists-to-be.”

Visit maps.google.com/biking to try out this new feature. Biking directions for Google Maps is currently in Beta. We are constantly adding new trail information and encourage bikers to send feedback and route information for inclusion via our reporting tool that you can find at the bottom of the map. Biking directions is currently available on desktop versions of Google Maps for the United States, but a mobile version is planned.

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Friday, March 5, 2010

Google to Host Educational Webcast*

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