Six telecoms operators from China, South Korea and the United States yesterday formed a consortium to jointly lay a new fibre-optic submarine cable directly linking China and the United States.

The cable, costing about US$500 million, is expected to ease the strain on Internet networks caused by rapid growth in the number of users in China and the US.

The new cable will be able to support 62 million simultaneous phone calls, more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing one linking the US and China.

Under the deal, Chinese mainland operators China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom (KT) and Verizon Business in the United States, will build the cable called Trans-Pacific Express (TPE).

It will be the first undersea cable directly crossing the Pacific connecting China and the US.

Currently, Internet data between the two countries has to be routed via Japan, which causes traffic delays.

The new cable, which will extend more than 18,000 kilometres, is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2008,

Access to overseas websites from China is usually slow, especially during peak hours, due to growth of the Internet population.

China Telecom Executive Vice-President Leng Rongquan said the current cable network linking China and the US will not be able to meet demand after 2008.

"The Internet traffic between China and the US is growing dramatically, which requires significant trans-Pacific capacity," he said.

Verizon Business owns more than 18 submarine cable systems in the Asia-Pacific region, but company Vice-President Ihab Tarazi said the rapidly-growing demand for high-speed services between the region and the US has made construction of TPE a necessity.

According to Verizon Business, TPE will have a landing point at Nedonna Beach, Oregon on the US West Coast, and points at Qingdao, Shandong Province and Chongming, an island in Shanghai.

TPE will also have landing points at Tanshui, Taiwan, and Keoje, South Korea.

The capacity expansion will not only benefit China and the US, but also the participating countries and regions.

Source: China Daily