HONG KONG, CHINA: AT&T expanded its network capacity in the Asia-Pacific region through the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) consortium.

The consortium, focused on building an undersea cable system connecting Southeast Asia and the United States, announced the completion of the 20,000 kilometer-long AAG submarine cable network’s comprehensive testing earlier this month. This milestone now enables AAG to begin carrying commercial traffic.

The AAG submarine cable, a two-terabits-per-second fiber optic submarine cable network, is the first cable system to directly link Southeast Asia and the United States. The system provides much-needed diversity from traditional cable routes between Southeast Asia, Hawaii and mainland US. The cable’s more southerly routing will also provide more protection from the effects of natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis that have previously damaged submarine cable systems, resulting in disruptions to international Internet links.

The AAG cable connects at AT&T landing stations in Guam, Hawaii and Southern California and is designed to provide more direct connectivity to emerging markets in Asia via landing stations in the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The cable also provides seamless connectivity to Australia and India via common landing points along its route.

Mary Anne Hicks, vice president, International Networking Engineering, AT&T, said: “As an initial party and the only US carrier involved in the AAG consortium, we’re excited at the opportunity to offer our customers more capacity and route diversity in the Asia-Pacific region. AT&T carries more than 18 petabytes of IP and data traffic on an average business day, and this traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Our participation in cable networks such as the AAG submarine cable network helps us to continually expand capacity for our customers’ growing global communications needs.”

AT&T owns or leases capacity on more than 80 submarine cable systems, which span more than 478,000 fiber-route miles around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between the Asia-Pacific region and North America. Earlier this year, AT&T announced plans to invest US$1 billion in 2009 to continue expanding its industry-leading network of solutions for multinational companies.