TOKYO —

NTT Communications Corp said Monday it will start operating a 570-kilometer optical undersea cable in June that connects Japan’s northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido with Sakhalin in the Russian Far East.

The Hokkaido-Sakhalin cable system, completed recently, was constructed jointly by NTT Communications and TransTeleCom, a major Russian backbone telecom service operator, with an investment of 5 billion yen.

NTT Communications will connect its own domestic fiber optic networks with TransTeleCom’s networks in Europe via the new undersea cable to offer telecom services to companies that have business footholds in various locations.

NTT Communications, the long-distance phone and Internet services unit of Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, and the Russian firm agreed in February 2007 to lay the undersea cable to meet growing demand for network connections between the Far East and Europe.

The cable, linking Hokkaido’s Ishikari and Sakhalin’s Nevelsk, has a maximum transmission capacity of 640 gigabits per second. The cost of construction was shouldered equally by the two firms.

JCN

2 Comments

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  theperilouspea at 08:25 PM JST - 22nd April

  In America the public has historically paid for public telecom utilities with potentials like these with fees , taxes and government subsidies (public investment) . I cannot see from the present article how the two corporate entities have addresses their operating and investment liabilites in this particular venture . I would love to see the contrast between American enterprise and cooperative Japanese-Russian ventures . The demonstration might illuminate why despite many advantages American network access seems to find an increasing lag between its connectivity and that of its neighbors .
  It may just be that when the free hand of the Market assumes control and derives a profit from these as enterprises that a dissonance between the object and the result occur ? The public moves from the entreupeneur and investor , apparently evolving into an uninvested partner with no prior principal or interest . The wealth being returned in a circuitous fashion that escapes my understanding . With a clearer presentation of the funding between these two cooperative neighbors and the prospectus of the return of and protection of the invested wealth I might be afforded an insight into American corporate philosophy .

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  Ultradude at 04:39 PM JST - 23rd April

  theperilouspea - are you OK? There are many examples of privately funded cable systems in the past - FLAG, to name one that I am personally familiar with. NTT Com is Japanese and they are partnering with a Russian firm, how will this afford you insight into American corporate philosophy?

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