1.28Tbps cable joining the US to China approved

ChinaTech News reports that the first ever direct fibre-optic undersea cable to China hasreceived regulatory approval to make landfall on the US West Coast.
Named the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE), the cable link is the firstnext-generation optical cable system to span the Pacific to China and will bethe first undersea cable system to land on the US West Coast in seven years.
The 17,000 kilometer long cable will connect the US with both Korea and Chinaand will provide greater communications capacity and higher speeds for rapidlygrowing data and voice traffic demands.
The cable will be capable of carrying the equivalent of 62 millionsimultaneous phone calls, more than 60 times the capacity of existing cablelinks between the US and China. It will initially provide data capacity of up to1.28 terabits per second (Tbps), with the design capacity to eventually provideup to 5.12Tbps in order to support future Internet traffic growth.
The cable is being laid by a consortium of telecommunications companies thatincludes Verizon Business, China Telecom, China Netcom, Korea Telecom andChunghwa Telecom. The first section of cable was placed on the sea floor nearthe Korean coast on September 21, 2007 and 55 kilometers of TPE cable were laidoff the US West Coast in late November.
Verizon said it recently received a licence from the US FederalCommunications Commission for the TPE cable to land near Rockaway Beach inOregon state.
The TPE cable buildout is reportedly on schedule for completion in August2008, in time for the Beijing Olympic Games.