BEIJING, Jan. 11 -- China Telecom has begun service on one path of the planned China-US Cable Network, the first undersea fiber optic cable network to directly link the two nations. The system, which is configured as a ring network, will have two landing points in China, in the US, and in Japan, and one landing point each in Korea, Taiwan, and Guam.The 16,000-mile system has a total capacity of 80 Gb/s, making it eight times larger than the existing Trans-Pacific Cable Network; it is one of the largest of its kind ever constructed, with 967,680 circuits. It is estimated that the total cost to build the ring will be more than $1 billion.The China-US Cable Network is operated by a group of more than 30 telecommunications carriers worldwide, including China Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Concert (the global venture previously held by AT&T and British Telecom), Hongkong Telecom, Kokusai Denshin Denwa (Japan), Korea Telecom, MCI Worldcom, NTT Worldwide Network Corp. (Japan), SBC Communications Inc., Singapore Telecom, Sprint Corp., Teleglobe USA, Telekom Malaysia and Telstra Corp. (Australia).