TPE or Trans-Pacific Express is a submarine telecommunications cable linking China,

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

, Japan, and the United States. The line is a US$500 million joint venture between 6 telecommunication companies

China Telecom China Telecom Corp., Ltd. is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is one of the red chip listed companies of state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation. Its H shares have been traded on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong since 15 Novembe ...

China Netcom China Netcom, full name China Netcom Group Corporation (Hong Kong) Limited (former stock codes: HKEX:0906, NYSE:CN), abbreviated CNC, was a telecommunication service provider in People's Republic of China. It was formed in August 1999 by the Chine ...

China Unicom China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd. () or China Unicom () (CUniq in short) is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator. Started as a wireless paging and GSM mobile operator, it currently provides a range of services in ...

Chunghwa Telecom Chunghwa Telecom Company, Ltd. () (, ) is the largest integrated telecom service provider in Taiwan, and the incumbent local exchange carrier of PSTN, Mobile, and broadband services in the country. History Chunghwa Telecom was founded as ...

Korea Telecom KT Corporation (Hangul: 주식회사 케이티), formerly Korea Telecom, is a South Korean telecommunications company. KT is the second-largest wireless carrier in South Korea, with 16.493 million subscribers as of Q4 2017. The formerly fully ...

, and

Verizon Communications Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas i ...

(

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

and NTT joined in March 2008).Trans-Pacific Express deal signed for US-China cable: CommsUpdate : TeleGeography Research
/ref> Ownership of the cable is evenly split between the 6 participants. Construction of this 11,000 miles (approx. 17,700 km) line was completed in September 2008,
and the Japan branch was completed in January 2010.
/ref> At the time of its construction, 5,547 gigabits per second of capacity was available across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, but only 2,726 gigabits per second existed across the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. Most links to China had to go through a hub in Japan, and access topped out at 155 Mbit/s.Verizon Business building $500 million terabit cable to China - Network World
The TPE is more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the U.S. and China, and thus its construction was a major enhancement to the cable systems between the two nations.dailywireless.org » New China Transpacific Cable
/ref> It is the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the U.S. and China,
/ref> and was also the first major undersea system to land on the U.S. West Coast in more than seven years.Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system gets FCC approval - Engadget
/ref> Initially, the Trans-Pacific Express cable was configured to handle traffic at 1.28 terabits per second (Tbit/s), but the system has a design capacity of up to 5.12 Tbit/s. Customers can also book individual connections running at 10 Gbit/s.

Landing Points

The landing points of the cable are located in: # Chongming,

Shanghai Municipality Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Qingdao Qingdao (, also spelled Tsingtao; , Mandarin: ) is a major city in eastern Shandong Province. The city's name in Chinese characters literally means " azure island". Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, it is a major nodal city of the One Belt ...

Shandong Province Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizatio ...

Maruyama Maruyama may refer to: * Maruyama (surname), a Japanese surname and list of people with the name * Maruyama, Chiba, a town in Japan * Maruyama Park in Kyoto * Mount Maru (disambiguation), a number of different mountains in Japan * 5147 Maruyama, ...

Chiba Chiba may refer to: Places China * (), town in Jianli County, Jingzhou, Hubei Japan * Chiba (city), capital of Chiba Prefecture ** Chiba Station, a train station * Chiba Prefecture, a sub-national jurisdiction in the Greater Tokyo Area on ...

, Japan #

Geoje Geoje (Hangeul: ; Hanja: 巨濟; ) is a city located in South Gyeongsang province, just off the coast of the port city of Busan, South Korea. Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (former Daewoo Shipyard) in Okpo and Samsung Heavy Industries (SH ...

South Gyeongsang Province South Gyeongsang Province ( ko, 경상남도, translit=Gyeongsangnam-do, ) is a province in the southeast of South Korea. The provincial capital is at Changwon. It is adjacent to the major metropolitan center and port of Busan. The UNESCO World ...

Tamsui Tamsui District (Hokkien POJ: ''Tām-chúi''; Hokkien Tâi-lô: ''Tām-tsuí''; Mandarin Pinyin: ''Dànshuǐ'') is a seaside district in New Taipei, Taiwan. It is named after the Tamsui River; the name means "fresh water". The town is popula ...

New Taipei City New Taipei City is a special municipality located in northern Taiwan. The city is home to an estimated population of 3,974,683 as of 2022, making it the most populous city of Taiwan, and also the second largest special municipality by area, be ...

( ROC) # Nedonna Beach,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, United States

References

External links

TPE page at the Atlantic-Cable.com History of Undersea Communications Website
{{Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Japan–United States relations South Korea–United States relations China–United States relations China–Japan relations China–South Korea relations Japan–South Korea relations