AT&T, NTT Join Trans-Pacific Express Consortium

AT&T and NTT Communications have joined the group of service providers that will operate the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) submarine cable system, which is expected to be activated this summer.

TPE is the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the United States and mainland China (as well as other points in the area including Hong Kong, India, Thailand and Vietnam) and is the first major undersea system to land on the U.S. West Coast (in this case, in Oregon) in more than seven years, Fred Briggs, executive vice president of operations and technology at Verizon Business, told xchange in a recent interview. “That’s actually the first new cable since the collapse of bubble,” said Briggs, who added that the cable is now 60 percent complete and is expected to be in operation by the second half of July, in time for the Olympics.

Verizon Business was one of the original TPE Consortium members, as were China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan).

According to Briggs, the system will initially be a 1.5 terabit link operating at 10gig wavelengths, but will be capable of growing to offer 5 terabits of capacity.

AT&T said the move to join TPE will help it meet its commitment to continue the expansion and diversification of its global network. "As international demand for increased bandwidth continues to grow, AT&T is building a network to handle the requirements of our customers now and into the future,” said John Stankey, group president of telecom operations for AT&T. “The Trans-Pacific Express cable network will increase data and voice reliability, and it will enhance diversity and resiliency to AT&T customers."

AT&T owns or leases capacity on more than 70 submarine cable systems, which span more than 456,000 fiber-route miles around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between the Asia-Pacific region and North America. In fact, AT&T signed an agreement last year to help build the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable system, which the company said is the first high-bandwidth optical-fiber submarine cable system that goes from Southeast Asia direct to North America.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines