Construction and Maintenance Agreement for Trans-Pacific Express (TPE)

The Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) for the construction of Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) submarine cable system was executed on Dec. 18, 2006, in Beijing. The TPE consortium includes 6 initial parties from China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan) and Verizon Business. The TPE consortium will evenly share the initial investment of US$ 500 million and the ownership of capacity.

TPE cable system is the first next-generation, high-capacity undersea system to link the United States with Mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea. TPE cable system will have design capacity of up to 5.12 Tbps to support future Internet growth and advanced applications such as video and e-commerce throughout the Asia-Pacific region. TPE will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28 terabits per second when activated. This also will be the first time individual customers can have direct submarine cable connectivity from the U.S. to China at wavelengths of up to 10 Gbps. TPE will offer transpacifc capacity more than 60 times the design capacity of the first China-US cable system, i.e. China-US Cable Network.  

TPE cable system will substantially enhance capability for the consortium members to provider high bandwidth for the growing Internet traffic and applications such as video and e-commerce. On the other hand, TPE will offer an alternative route for high capacity requirements between Asia and USA, instead of going through Japan as a hub. And further more, TPE will offer a solution for traffic between Asia and USA to avoid disaster due to possible multiple cables break near Taiwan.