I think our blogpost [0] is more interesting than this wrapper in this case, at least to the HN crowd as it explicitly calls out capacity (120 Tbps) and provides more context.
The CEO is an Ex-telecoms guy, and you don't actually have to know how to do much. Most of the legwork is done by the submarine cable systems company you hire, in this case TE Subcom. Mostly it's just a funding entity.
Newly established Hong Kong-based company Pacific Light Data Communication (PLDC) – a subsidiary of investment fund China Soft Power Technology Holding Limited (CSPTHL) – has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with TE SubCom for the construction of a new submarine cable system, dubbed Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will directly connect Hong Kong with the US.
Disappointing that it's only HK, not mainland China. Nobody's going to notice the difference. From the headline, it sounded like FB and Google we getting some kind of toe in the door, but their cable is going to be useless to the Chinese who have their international data throttled for political reasons, not because of a lack of cables.
If the Chinese didn't try to slow down outside Internet traffic coming in massively in order to censor and spy on it, the speeds would likely become much better.
I've been told that this is the primary purpose of the whole thing. It's a back door protectionist tax on foreign Internet services done in such a way as to not trigger taxation provisions in trade deals.
Someone who once specialized in breaking the GFW for NGOs and activist groups, and who worked a lot in China.
Censorship is still a motive, just not the only one and maybe not even the primary one. The GFW is just too porous to be an effective censor, but it does prevent foreign Internet based SaaS from competing in China. It means to compete in China you must be in China where your IP can be easily appropriated since the Chinese state must also have root on your box (or the cloud host).
This cable is most likely for diversification for paths to Asia. There are 11 cables that land in HK, Google is a consortium member on one of them (SJC).
I wonder how this massive new fiber will stimulate the already sizeable undergrowth of VPN and proxy solutions for IP-hungry mainlanders, many of which terminate in Hong Kong.
I find this interesting because as a consortium cable theres not that many players involved and one of them - FB is blocked in China(with the exception of Hong Kong.)
Many Cloud providers have DC's in HK. Its a huge market even if the rest of China can't access it. I'm guessing HK may be where Chinese companies that cater to the international market reside.
What makes you say that? "The Peering Links" is way to generic to be useful - hundreds of companies and networks operate "peering" (or transit, or transport) links between the US and Asia. To name a few: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Cogent, Level3, NTT, HE.net, China Telecom/Unicom/Mobile, KDDI, Tata, Verizon, Korea Telecom, PCCW, LG, SingTel, Telstra, AT&T, CenturyLink, Bharti Airtel, and Softbank.
Regardless, that is more or less independent of this cable, which will be used for bulk data transfer by 2 private companies.
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
[0] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/new-undersea-ca...