FCC approves Verizon submarine cable project

Verizon obtained final approval from the Federal Communications Commission to activate and operate the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system in the US.

The FCC granted a landing license, which provides final authority to land the Trans-Pacific Express cable in Oregon, and to activate and operate the cable system in the US.

The application for the license was filed with the FCC last year.

The TPE cable is the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and mainland China.

It also is the first major undersea system to land on the US West Coast in more than seven years. The 17,000-kilometer submarine communications cable will use the latest optical technology and provide greater capacity and higher speeds to meet the dramatic increase in demand for IP, data and voice communications traffic between the US and the Asia-Pacific region and within the region.

The TPE cable, being built by a consortium comprised of Verizon Business, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom, can support the equivalent of 62 million simultaneous phone calls, more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China. The cable will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28Tbps, and the system will have a design capacity of up to 5.12Tbps to support future internet growth and advanced applications such as video and e-commerce.