At the time of its construction, 5,547 gigabits per second of capacity was available across the Atlantic Ocean, but only 2,726 gigabits per second existed across the Pacific Ocean.[2] Most links to China had to go through a hub in Japan, and access topped out at 155 Mbit/s.[5] The TPE is more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the U.S. and China, and thus its construction was a major enhancement to the cable systems between the two nations.[6] It is the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the U.S. and China,[7] and was also the first major undersea system to land on the U.S. West Coast in more than seven years.[8] Initially, the Trans-Pacific Express cable was configured to handle traffic at 1.28 terabits per second (Tbit/s), but the system has a design capacity of up to 5.12 Tbit/s. Customers can also book individual connections running at 10 Gbit/s.[2]