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Tuesday March 25, 10:51 PMNTT says Japan joining giant trans-Pacific cable
The entrance of NTT Communications Corp., a unit of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, ensures that a branch of the "Trans-Pacific Express" fibre optic cable network will connect with Japan, Asia's largest economy. The project -- which already involves companies from China, Taiwan and AT&T's rival Verizon Communications -- was originally estimated to cost some 500 million dollars. In the first phase, a cable stretching 17,000 kilometres (11,000 miles) from China's east coast to the western US state of Oregon is set to go into service by August, in time to transmit high-speed data from the Beijing Olympics. The link is expected to have some 60 times the capacity of an existing one under the ocean. The new cable is expected to help avoid breakdowns in Internet traffic similar to what occurred following a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck the seabed near Taiwan in December 2006, snapping undersea telecom cables. The quake caused major communications disruptions in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and further afield for nearly a month. NTT Communications said in a statement that the branch connecting Japan with other parts of Asia would be operational by the first quarter of 2009, with a Japan-US section finished by early 2010. The Japanese company said that international data transmission, including through the Internet, "has been growing at an exceptional rate over the past few years." AT&T said in a separate statement that entering the Trans-Pacific Express consortium was "part of its plan to increase the scope and resiliency of its global network." Neither firm disclosed financial terms, but AT&T said its contribution would be part of one billion dollars the company has budgeted this year to expand services for multinational companies. The companies already in the consortium are mainland Chinese companies China Telecom, China Netcom and China Unicom, as well as Korea Telecom, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom and Verizon. Verizon welcomed the participation of the two new partners. "NTT's participation is great news for our multinational customers, who will benefit from an additional link with Japan," Ihab Tarazi, Verizon's vice president of global network planning, said in a statement. NTT's rival KDDI Corp. is one of six firms involved in a separate project to construct an ultra-high-speed submarine cable to carry Internet and other traffic between Japan and the United States. NTT is also expected soon to start using a new underwater cable between Japan and Russia developed with Russia's TransTelecom. Currently much of Japan's communications with Europe is routed via the Indian Ocean. |
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