|
Taiwan
's Chunghwa Telecom Co. has signed an agreement with its counterparts in
China
and
South Korea
to jointly construct the first "terabit" optical cable across the
Pacific Ocean
.
The megacorporations -- including
Chunghwa Telecom
,
China
Telecom
,
China
Netcom
,
China
Unicom and Korean Telecom -- will invest US$500 million in the project to build
the Trans Pacific Express (TPE) optical cable, which will connect the
United States
with
Taiwan
,
China
and
South Korea
.
The planned system will also stretch toward North and South Asia,
including
India
, providing smooth and unobstructed Internet, digital and vocal transmission
services.
The agreement was reached in
Beijing
on December 18, with construction scheduled to begin in early 2007, and be
completed in the third quarter of 2008, according to Chunghwa Telecom.
Chunghwa Telecom Vice President Lin Jen-hung, who signed the pact on
behalf of the company, said that with constantly and greatly increasing Taiwan-U.S.
and Taiwan-China Internet interactions, Chunghwa Telecom has to expand its
facilities to meet the growing demand for broadband communications. The terabit
TPE submarine cable is the solution, Lin noted.
A terabit -- a unit in measuring data transmission speed – is one
trillion binary digits, or 1,000,000,000,000 bits. A terabit is used for
measuring the amount of data transferred in a second between two
telecommunication points or within network devices.
The TPE's initial bandwidth will be 1.28 Tbps, and is expandable to 5.12
Tbps to meet growing demand for fast and unobstructed Internet, digital and
vocal transmission between the Asia-Pacific and the
U.S.
(Source:
Central News Agency) | 