China opened its first land optical cable linking Asia and Europe on Wednesday, supplementing the existing undersea cable and communication satellites with a new transmission method.  

The new cable, jointly built by China Unicom and communication companies from Mongolia and Russia, is 7,500 kilometers long and boasts a maximum transmission capacity of 622 MB per second.

A spokesman of China Unicom said the land cable had greatly shortened the distance compared with the undersea cable, which would cut down on time lag in transmission.

The new cable, adopting an advanced synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) transmission system, connected China with Mongolia and Russia, and from China and Russia could be extended to more Asian and European countries, the spokesman said.

"It offers customers another choice in addition to the submarine cable," he said.

Analysts consider the cable will help optimize the current international transmission networks owned by China Unicom. Its direct transmission links also cover the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong of China.

(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2004)