Thursday, 27 March 2008

AT&T and NTT Join Trans-Pacific Express Consortium

AT&T and NTT Communications Corporation are the latest two new participants to have come on board the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) Consortium.

According to recent release, AT&T and NTT Communications Corporation signed construction and maintenance agreements on February 28, 2008 and March 14, 2008 respectively to participate in the TPE Consortium, which has been working towards designing and constructing an 18,000-kilometer next-generation fiber-optic submarine communications cable between the Asia-Pacific region and the United States.

Prior to the two new additions, the TPE Consortium consited of China Netcom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom and Verizon Business.

The TPE cable is said to be the first multi-terabit optical cable directly linking the U.S. mainland and East Asia with a design capacity of up to 5.12 terabits per second (Tbps).

Internet, video and data traffic has been growing at an exceptional pace over the past few years. The number of broadband Internet users along with the average size of the content needed by users has dramatically increased the amount of Internet traffic around the world. Enterprise and large-business users also require higher speeds and greater capacity on network routes to deliver voice, video and data across the globe as they continue to expand their business globally. The TPE aims to support current and future needs for high-speed traffic, as well as enhance reliability by securing route diversity from other submarine cables between the Asia-Pacific region and the U.S.

The segment to be added as the result of NTT joining the TPE Consortium this month is the additional link to Japan, which is expected to be completed in March 2009, and the Japan-to-U.S. link, which is expected to be completed in early 2010 (subject to regulatory approvals).