New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable System

Overview

The New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable System is a trans-Pacific submarine cable connecting China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Spanning 13,618 km, it provides direct connectivity across the North Pacific corridor, linking East Asian telecommunications networks with the west coast of North America.

Route and Landings

In China, the cable lands at three points: Chongming, Lingang, and Nanhui. In Japan, the cable has a landing station at Maruyama. In South Korea, the cable comes ashore at Busan. In Taiwan, the landing point is Toucheng. In the United States, the cable lands at Pacific City, Oregon.

Ownership and Operators

The NCP Cable System is owned by a consortium of seven companies: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, KT, Microsoft, and Softbank. The inclusion of Microsoft marks the cable as one of the earlier trans-Pacific systems to feature a major technology company alongside traditional telecommunications carriers. KT and Softbank are the national carrier representatives of South Korea and Japan, respectively.

Technical Profile

No specific capacity, fiber pair count, or supplier data is available for the NCP Cable System at this time.

Status and Timeline

The NCP Cable System entered service in 2018. It is currently operational, carrying traffic between its landing points across the North Pacific.

Regional Context

The North Pacific and trans-Pacific corridor served by NCP is one of the highest-demand submarine cable routes in the world, connecting the major economies of East Asia with North America. Among cables operating in overlapping or adjacent corridors, EAC-C2C shares the China–Japan–South Korea–Taiwan segment of the route and entered service in 2002, while the far longer Project Waterworth spans 50,000 km in the same broader ocean basin. At 13,618 km, NCP occupies a mid-range footprint compared to these peers, with a tightly concentrated set of landings in East Asia paired with a single North American terminus.

Measured performance over the last 60 days across 55 ping tests shows an average round-trip latency of 98.7 ms, with a best recorded result of 49.1 ms, reflecting the physical distances involved in spanning the North Pacific.

Strategic Role

By landing at three separate points in China — Chongming, Lingang, and Nanhui — the NCP Cable System provides geographic diversity within the Chinese network. Combined with landings in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, the system supports a multi-country mesh of connectivity across five distinct national networks. Its ownership structure, blending Chinese state-owned carriers, regional operators, and a US technology company, reflects the cross-sector demand for dedicated trans-Pacific capacity that characterized the mid-2010s wave of new cable investment.