Verizon, the second-largest U.S. telco, will team with five Asian phone companies to construct a $500 million undersea broadband cable network. The cable will link the United States with China.
Construction begins early next year and is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2008, Verizon said. The new capacity — the system can currently support 62 million simultaneous phone calls — will be more than 60 times that of the current network.
China Telecom, China United Telecommunications, China Network Communications Group, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom and South Korea’s KT will help finance the network.