Asia Netcom has been approved to lay a new undersea cable to connect its current network.

The new network, which is 350km long, is expected to be opened by the beginning of 2006, and will achieve a total capacity of 80GB.

It will start from Qingdao in China's east Shandong Province and will be linked to the undersea cable network system of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is expected that upon completion of the construction, the speed of China Netcom's broadband will be increased by as much as 50%.

In recent years, undersea cables that linked China with Asia and North America have broken, causing traffic delays and outages for several days.