5.12TB connection from US to Asia being built by Verizon joint venture.

With it’s final destination the Chinese mainland, with stops in Taiwan and Korea, Verizon is expanding its presence as a trans pacific carrier.

Verizon announced back in 2006 they’d be taking part in a different, $500 million project to run a new, 11,000 mile cable from the United States directly to mainland China. Construction started on the Trans-Pacific Express project last September, and this week Verizon got the FCC’s approval to land the fiber line in Oregon. The new pipe should provide some very serious bandwidth:

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