Communications Day claimed in its story that Google and other carriers would join together to rollout the “Unity” cable. Planning meetings have happened as recently as last week.

How close is Google to slinging some major bandwidth under the sea? They aren’t saying:

Google would not strictly confirm or deny the existence of the Unity plan today, with spokesman Barry Schnitt telling our North American correspondent Patrick Neighly that “Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable. We’re not commenting on any of these plans.”

Job listings for strategic negotiators skilled in working on issues related to submarine networks began appearing online at the end of July. We’re going to suggest Google found who they were looking for to serve in this position.

It’s hard to be a big spender with nothing to spend. Lenders that made loans to risky credit types have been hurt by a massive drop in their industry.

The effects could be felt in the homes of people who have made fortunes off the advertising by subprime lenders. A Financial Times report cited the downturn as affecting two of Nielsen//NetRating’s top ten largest online advertisers: lenders Countrywide and Low Rate Source.

There aren’t any worries being voiced by the search industry yet. Microsoft’s MSN general manager David Jakubowski acknowledged the issues to FT.com, but didn’t express grave concern:

“A lot of the subprime [advertising] has gone away,” said David Jakubowski, general manager of Microsoft’s MSN service.

This loss had yet to have a broader effect in the search business, he added.

“I haven’t felt a pricing hit because of it,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything crazy happen,” though he added that the company continued to keep a close eye on this area for more fallout.

Financial advertising has long represented a lucrative market for paid search and display ads online. A downturn in that spending has been affecting Yahoo since 2006.

Google Seeks Edge In Voice Traffic Talks

Job postings that appeared on MediaBistro at the end of July for Google indicate they are taking more aggressive stances in making deals for network services. Of particular interest: Google has tagged one of the two Strategic Negotiator positions as ‘Voice Focus – Global Infrastructure.’

Though Google has received attention recently for its proposed ‘white-label’ mobile phone hardware, we’ve always believed Google has much more in mind for wireless communications. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said several times the growth and revenue available through mobile has been part of the company’s strategy.

Even though the job title for one position has been labeled as Voice Focus, the job description reads far more generically when it comes to networking services. This is part of the description:

Negotiation and purchasing of IP transit services in North America, Europe, Asia, and/or Latin America; negotiation of partnerships with Internet exchanges, regional peering providers, and paid peering arrangements with major carriers.

Pretty common stuff, yet Google hints at deeper desires in the job title. We’re going to count this as another piece of speculative evidence that Google plans a challenge on the wireless industry. Imagine being able to pick up an iPhone-like mobile device that has its web and VoIP service supported by Google advertising, running on a Google-branded network.

Who could resist the price of free for service, along with a range of hardware delivered by Google’s partners in the wireless device industry? Google could become a global utility provider of wireless service, while selling mobile ads that Schmidt called “twice as profitable” as their non-mobile counterparts.

The submarine networking position doesn’t look as sexy as the voice focused one, but it’s just as important. Getting Internet traffic from continent to continent means sending it underwater. A truly global voice/VoIP solution means Google needs some favorable deals here as well.