Alcatel (Paris) recently completed a submarine cable system between Haikou, on the island of Hainan (Hainan Province) and Beihai (Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) on the mainland of China. With an overall length of 277 km, this is the longest domestic unrepeatered submarine system to have been supplied to China Telecom (Beijing). The contract for the project, valued at $10 million, was awarded to Alcatel at the beginning of 1998. Alcatel also supplied Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) transmission network equipment and the network management system. Initially, the link will operate at 2.5 Gbits/sec over two fiber pairs of the 12-fiber cable.