China Unicom recently signed a joint MOU with dominant operators in APAC to build a Asia Pacific Gateway (APG).

APG would connect major economies in APAC, meet the increasing demands for services in the region and provide protection and backup path for other existing submarine cables. With the system in place, China Unicom users would have the fastest direct path form North Asia to Southeast Asia. Since the new submarine cable bypassed submarine earthquake zone, the network security of operators in APAC would be greatly improved.

With a total length of 8000 kilometers, APG would connect Chinese mainland, Chinese Taiwan, Chinese Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. The system would adopt cutting-edge wave Pision multiplexing transmission technologies and the total capacity would reach 4Tbit/s. the construction was expected to start from the beginning of 2010 and to be completed and put into production in 2011.

The other operators attending the MOU signing ceremony included China Telecom, Cheunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, KT, NTT Com, PLDT from Philippines, TM and VNPT from Vietnam.

China Unicom planned to provide a landing station in Chinese mainland for this cable in order to connect it with existing submarine cables or large-capacity one planned to be constructed in the region and to provide more extensive network coverage and more flexible circuit resources for operators.

APG, together with China Unicom's existing TPE, China-US, Japan-US, APCN2, EAC, C2C, SMW-3 and FLAG submarine cables, formed the company's global submarine cable network. In addition, the system would provide protection backup for many existing submarine cable systems and would greatly improve China Unicom's international network security.