Tuesday, March 25, 2008

NTT, AT&T Join Undersea Cable Group


The Trans-Pacific Express Consortium has signed two new members, AT&T and NTT Communications, says CommsDay reporter Tony Chan. The two new consortium members join Verizon Business, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom and Korea Telecom as members of the TPE consortium.

As a result of its joining the TPE consortium, at&t now has access to two out of three major trans-Pacific cables being built. The company also is part of the Asia-America Gateway system linking South Asia to the United States.

The current trans-Pacific capacity market is dominated by two operators, Tata Communications, who owns the TGN-Pacific, and Pacific Crossing.

As has been the case within the U.S. long-haul market, there is growing discussion of the wisdom of fiber swaps, capacity swaps and other mechanisms such as participation in multiple new undersea cable consortia as a way of enhancing network reliability.

Within the U.S. market, for example, carriers gain a measure of addtional security simply by swapping fibers, wavelengths and capacity on their backbones.

To a certain extent, that same sort of thinking is partly driving undersea consortium participation as well.

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