Verizon Business Customers Benefit from TPE Subsea Network

SEPTEMBER 17, 2008 -- Verizon Business today announced that it is first to market with the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable network connecting the United States with mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Verizon Business multinational customers with IP, data, and voice communications traffic moving onto this cable system, which is now active, will see immediate benefits, including additional capacity, greater physical diversity, reduced latency, improved performance, and seven-way mesh network diversity, says the carrier.
"Less than two years ago in Beijing, I told our customers we would deliver the network they needed by building the most direct and highest-capacity cable system between the United States and China/northern Asia," recalls Fred Briggs, executive vice president of Verizon Business operations and technology. "Today, our multinational customers can take full advantage of this very aggressive cable build. They can expand their businesses throughout northern Asia knowing their mission-critical traffic is riding on one of the most advanced submarine cable networks in the world."
Verizon Business teamed up with founding TPE Consortium members--China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom, and Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan)--to build the TPE cable. The new 18,000-km (more than 11,000-mile) cable system uses the latest optical technology to provide greater capacity and high speeds to meet the dramatic increase in demand for IP, data, and voice communications in the growth countries. The new fiber-optic cable can support the equivalent of 77.5 million simultaneous phone calls, says Verizon, more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the United States and mainland China.
The operating capacity of the system--the largest ever built directly between the U.S. and mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan--is 3.2 Tbits/sec, an increase of 25% over the original system design. With a minimum 80 wavelengths per fiber, TPE has the highest wave-density of any submarine cable in the world at this length. For the first time, individual customers can now access a cable system at wavelengths of up to 10 Gbits/sec directly from the U.S. to China, Korea, and Taiwan. In the next phase, the system will add links to Japan.
Verizon Business' Private IP and Private Line customers with traffic between the United States and China will be the first to see benefits across the network, says Verizon. One of the most sought-after benefits is reduced latency--the time it takes for data sent from its entry point in the network to reach its destination.
"When we designed this submarine cable system, we sought the shortest direct physical paths between locations," reports Ihab Tarazi, vice president of global network planning for Verizon Business. "This cable minimizes the physical distance for direct connectivity to China, South Korea, and Taiwan and provides route diversity away from Japan, where many other submarine cables land today."
Verizon Business customers using the Trans-Pacific Express cable network also will take advantage of additional investments to connect the system to the company's ultra-long-haul network in the U.S., extensions across Asia that provide end-to-end connectivity, and secured capacity for private IP customers in the Asia Pacific region.
In addition to more capacity, higher speeds and lower latency, the TPE system will provide more diversity of routes for customers using Pacific submarine cables, notes the carrier. Ever since a major earthquake occurred off the coast of Taiwan in December 2006, diversity has become one of the most important features customers require when purchasing capacity on undersea cables.
Customers also will take advantage of a network architecture design called meshing, which provides alternate paths for rerouting traffic in the event of a cable cut or network disruption. When a service interruption occurs and meshing is needed, the equipment housed in network buildings on land allow the rerouting of voice and data traffic within 50 to 100 milliseconds.
Verizon Business says it is the first to offer seven-way trans-oceanic mesh diversity across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The company's mesh network in northern Asia includes physical node diversity in major cities, coupled with backhaul and cable system diversity to provide superior survivability during network issues. Mesh nodes were recently installed in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Japan was already included in the Pacific global mesh network.
"When you combine the complete TPE package we are offering our Verizon Business multinational customers, it's second to none in the industry," contends Tarazi.