Global Bandwidth, Asia Global Finish Cable Systems

Asia Global Crossing Ltd., an affiliate of Global Crossing Ltd. (Hamilton, Bermuda) and Global Bandwidth Solutions, a subsidiary of Marubeni Corp. (Tokyo), have completed the cable connections on the northern section of their transpacific subsea cable, Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1), and their Japanese terrestrial system, Global Access Ltd. (GAL). The subsea and terrestrial systems will combine to provide broadband capacity from the U.S. to Tokyo. After testing, the two systems are expected to be ready for service before the end of December, three months ahead of schedule and about one year before the next cable system linking the U.S. and Japan will begin service.

PC-1 will connect four landing points in Japan and the U.S. to form a 21,000-km, four-fiber pair self-healing ring. Landing points in Washington State and Ajigaura are now complete. The transoceanic cable is designed to operate initially at 80 Gbps (gigabits per second) of service capacity, and is upgradeable to 640 Gbps, using DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) technology.

Global Access will supply the connection from the coast to the major metropolitan markets in Japan on its state-of-the-art terrestrial fiber optic network. The first segment of the network between the PC-1 cable station at Ajigaura (Ibaragi Prefecture) and Tokyo has recently been completed and will begin service in concert with PC-1. Construction on this segment began in September 1998 and principal rights of way were obtained from Ibaragi Kotsu Co. and Kashima Rinkai Railway Co.

The second segment of the GAL network will connect PC-1's southern Japanese cable station at Shima (Mie Prefecture) to Osaka and is scheduled to begin service this summer. When completed, the network will connect with Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. At that time, the GAL network will cover over 1,500 km and provide ultra-high capacity over multiple ring configurations providing diverse routing options and redundancies to ensure service quality. GAL will maintain its own operating center and will also be integrated into Global Crossing's new worldwide network operations center in London.

Edited by Kristin Keiser