Google, Facebook partner in US-China data link

The Wall Street Journal reports Facebook and Google owner Alphabet will partner with a little-known Chinese company to build a ultrafast internet cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, the latest sign of its US backers’ insatiable appetite for bandwidth. The 12,800-kilometer Pacific Light Cable Network would use new fiber-optic technology to support the region’s highest-capacity route, according to TE Connectivity, the US company under contract to build the link. TE says it expects to launch the system in 2018. Funding the project along with the US tech giants is a new Hong Kong company called Pacific Light Data Communication, which has no previous experience building networks. Google, Facebook and Microsoft have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the underwater cables that carry most of the world’s internet traffic.