Airtel the leading mobile telephony provider has joined five leading international companies including Google to build a 10,000 km undersea cable to link Asia and the United States. The high bandwidth cable system that would pump 7.68 terabits of information per second — equivalent to about 9 crore telephone lines — is being called Unity and is estimated to cost $ 300 million (about Rs 1,200 crore). The Unity consortium includes Malaysia’s Global Transit Limited, leading search engine firm Google, Japanese telecom major KDDI Corporation, and Pacnet and SingTel from Singapore. The ultimate aim of the cable is to be able to allow companies to send large amounts of data across the world at a lower price. Consortium companies will utilize a five fiber pair cable system, which can be upgraded to eight fiber pairs later down the road.