Question: In what year was the network of cables with which Pacific Fibre's proposed trans-Pacific undersea cable was to have competed commissioned?
Context: Pacific Fibre is a New Zealand-based company that proposed to build a trans-Pacific undersea cable that was to have competed with the Southern Cross Cable operated by Telecom New Zealand.  The cable would have totalled 12,750 km (7,920 miles) in length, and the initial investment was projected to be US$350 million.  Customers included Vodafone New Zealand, Australian ISP iiNet, and the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network in New Zealand. Cabled observatories are seabed oceanographic research platforms connected to the surface by undersea cables.  Such cables supply both power and telecommunications to instruments.  By removing the limitations of undersea power sources and sonar or RF communications, cabled observatories allow persistent study of underwater phenomena.  A single cable can support multiple observation sites via individual "drops;" multiple or branching cables may then provide data in 2D or 3D. Nedonna Beach is an unincorporated community in Tillamook County, in the U.S. state of Oregon.  It serves as the U.S. terminus of the Trans-Pacific Express undersea cable and Southern Cross Cable.  Nedonna Beach is west of U.S. Route 101 between Rockaway Beach and Nehalem Bay. The Southern Cross Cable, operated by Bermuda company Southern Cross Cables Limited, is a trans-Pacific network of telecommunications cables commissioned in 2000. The Alaska Communications System (ACS), also known as the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS), was a system of cables and telegraph lines authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1900 and constructed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.  The communications lines were to serve both military and civilian needs in the territory of Alaska.  By 1904, ACS comprised some 2100 mi of undersea cable, 1,400 plus miles of land lines, and a wireless segment across at least 107 mi .  On May 15, 1936 WAMCATS was renamed the U.S. Army Alaska Communications System.  The Alaska Communications System remained under the control of the Army Signal Corps until 1962 when it was taken over by the U.S. Air Force.  The ACS handled the radioteletype, radio telephone, 500 kHz ship-to-shore frequencies, collected communications intelligence, and other services for more than half a century in Alaska. A transatlantic telegraph cable is an undersea cable running under the Atlantic Ocean used for telegraph communications.  The first was laid across the floor of the Atlantic from Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland.  The first communications occurred August 16, 1858, reducing the communication time between North America and Europe from ten days – the time it took to deliver a message by ship – to only 17 hours.  Transatlantic telegraph cables have been replaced by transatlantic telecommunications cables. TAT-14 is the 14th consortium transatlantic telecommunications cable system.  In operation from 2001, it uses wavelength division multiplexing.  The cable system is built from multiple pairs of fibres—one fibre in each pair is used for data carried in one direction and the other in the opposite direction.  Although optical fibre can be used in both directions simultaneously, for reliability it is better not to require splitting equipment at the end of the individual fibre to separate transmit and receive signals—hence a fibre pair is used.  TAT-14 uses four pairs of fibres—two pairs as active and two as backup.  Each fibre in each pair carries 16 wavelengths in one direction, and each wavelength carries up to an STM-256 (38,486,016 kbit/s as payload).  The fibres are bundled into submarine cables connecting the United States and the European Union (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) in a ring topology. Cable compounds are materials used to prevent the ingress of moisture into telecommunication and power transmission cables.  The exact nature of the compound varies depending upon the type of cable in which they are used, but generally they are either soft waxy compounds (for use in copper-wire telecom cables), soft thixotropic gels with a consistency similar to that of hair gel (for use in optical fibre cables), or resin/polymer thickened oils (for use in paper insulated energy cables). TRANSPAC or Trans-pacific cable (TPC) is a series of undersea cables under the Pacific Ocean. Fibre Channel, or FC, is a high-speed network technology (commonly running at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 128 gigabit per second rates) primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers.  Fibre Channel is mainly used in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data centers. Fibre Channel networks form a switched fabric because they operate in unison as one big switch.  Fibre Channel typically runs on optical fiber cables within and between data centers.
Answer: 2000