Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system gets FCC approval

It's not like we haven't seen consortiums working to establish better links between America and Asia, but the more the merrier, right? Apparently, Verizon Business has just recently received the all-important thumbs-up from the FCC to "activate and operate the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system in the US." The TPE cable is hailed as "the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and mainland China," and is the first major system of its kind to land on America's West Coast (Oregon, to be precise) in over seven years. For those curious, the 10,563-mile submarine communications cable will be able to support the equivalent of 62 million simultaneous phone calls -- which is "more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China" -- and will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28Tbps. So, when will this thing be up and running? If all goes to plan, it should be fully operational by August (you know, prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing).

[Image courtesy of Devicepedia]

[Rafer @ Jan 11th 2008 9:51PM]

Cool... Does it come in pieces?

[Andrew @ Jan 11th 2008 9:51PM]

Am I the only one who, when first reading the headline, thought there was going to be not a submarine cable system, but a cable system for SUBMARINES?

Now THAT'S the way to travel.

[Joe @ Jan 11th 2008 10:07PM]

Nope, I thought the same =\

[agarfield2004 @ Jan 11th 2008 10:06PM]

Those cables are crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable

[ARealOG @ Jan 11th 2008 10:15PM]

1.28 Tb per second? That's like 16.384 Gigabytes per second!

[Sam Winter @ Jan 13th 2008 5:17AM]

Fail. For god sakes use a calculator. 163.8 Gigabytes/sec

[CaliforniaKid @ Jan 11th 2008 10:59PM]

Excuse me, Sir. Could you spare some spare bandwidth?

[Andrew @ Jan 11th 2008 11:03PM]

Now that's a terrorist attack waiting to happen...

[MARSHAK @ Jan 12th 2008 1:50AM]

eh. good luck. get under the ocean, dig up the cable, use some massive underwater saw to cut the cable. and in a few days they'll have it fixed. in the meantime they'll have to route the calls somewhere else. bloody tragedy, it takes an extra 4 seconds to make your international call, im sure the terrorists have won.

[Jason Cox @ Jan 11th 2008 11:05PM]

All hail the new tube!

[Jeff @ Jan 11th 2008 11:12PM]

Verizon still can't get fiber in my neighborhood and it isn't at the bottom of the ocean... Somehow I think they should be focusing on rolling out more fiber above sea level...

[cromas @ Jan 13th 2008 1:19AM]

Oh yeah. Getting ~20mbps of bandwidth to your house is far more important than getting 1,280,000mbps of bandwidth ready to serve hundreds of millions of people across the world. Good call.

[bradwjensen @ Jan 11th 2008 11:36PM]

...If they broke, don't you think that everything around it would get shocked..?

[Shane @ Jan 12th 2008 12:03AM]

No. Its fiber. There is no electrical current passing through fiber optic cable.

[John @ Jan 18th 2008 11:48AM]

Actually there will be electrical wires in the cable to power the repeaters because the light can only go so far so you need to repeat it down the length, I was reading on another site about some mob who made a 5TB optical fibre connection from sweden to another country and that was they're major draw back the repeaters for it.

Again this was a few years ago so it's open to improvement like all things.

The electrical wires won't kill anything around the area because it's salt water essentially It will just make alot of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Chlorine and a few other gases from electrolisis and eventually the cable will become too corroded to be a problem.

[tekdemon @ Jan 12th 2008 2:07AM]

John, it's impractical to run the high voltages that would be required to make the power go that far though...esepcially in salt water, lol.

[Sam Winter @ Jan 13th 2008 5:20AM]

Fail. fiber optic...

[brp1264 @ Feb 5th 2008 2:49PM]

John is right.

There will be 12kv power feed equipment on either end to power the undersea erbium doped optical amplifiers (repeaters).

The optical fibers are in the middle of the cable, and are surrounded by teflon, a copper conductor, and it is further armored with steel when it approaches land.

If there is a cable cut or break, it would simply ground to the ocean bed, creating a shunt fault.

[Endies @ Jan 11th 2008 11:44PM]

Look out for Megaladon.

[Justin @ Jan 12th 2008 1:24AM]

yeah Oregon!

[John @ Jan 12th 2008 1:29AM]

This is good news, This will mean a far better link to Australia and the southern Asian countries and places like New Zealand and such.

[ck @ Jan 12th 2008 2:59AM]

Why do telcos still insists on measuring capacity by number of phone calls? Those days are over ...

[Garst @ Jan 12th 2008 4:00AM]

Did anyone else read the head line and thought it was going to be about something totally different? I read it and got confused because I thought it was going to be about cable for submarines. Which mean, I think it must be time for bed; it is 3:00 am now.

[Thomas @ Jan 12th 2008 6:57PM]

Great, thats 62 million simultaneous emails advertising a pork bun recipe. By the way it is: a) Print out b)fold into a ball c)enjoy with some soy sauce.

[Jimmy @ Jan 12th 2008 8:16PM]

I watched a Documentary.. of when the U.S use to have Some Subs. Tap Lines.. of the coast of Russia..
i think this will only make it easy-er for Foreign Country to hack in to are System?

[Sam Winter @ Jan 13th 2008 5:22AM]

learn how to spell and use proper grammar. sorry, but GOD DAMN ITS ANNOYING. "are".. it's "our" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[dlheritage @ Jan 14th 2008 9:20AM]

Adding my voice to the masses, the cable is NOT for submarines. Perhaps the proper use here is sub-marine or submerged marine cable. It is clear that bloggers and others, attempting to characterize themselves as writers, could benefit from a closer reading of their posts (at a minimum) or consider employing an editor, to clean up the ambiguities.

Engadget does a better job than most at ensuring the work of the "writers" is clear, concise, and readable.

This story made me laugh - and I appreciate that!