Major telecommunication operators from China's mainland, Taiwan, the United States and the Republic of Korea announced on Monday that they had started laying a submarine optical cable link across the Pacific Ocean.

The six partners are China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Taiwan-based Chunghua Telecom, Korea Telecom and U.S.-based Verizon.

Expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2008, construction of the optical cable link will cost 500 million US dollars.

The six operators launched the move because the present cable cannot meet the rising demand for internet bandwidth across the Pacific Ocean. Most of the internet volume between China and the United States has to be re-routed through Hong Kong or Japan,

Source: Xinhua