Google, Facebook to Invest in U.S.-China Data Link | Hacker News Reader

Google, Facebook to Invest in U.S.-China Data Link

wsj.com

74 pointsjstreebin24 comments

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.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

[0] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/new-undersea-ca...

Pacific Light Data is a newcomer to the industry with no previous experience building networks.

Must've been a hell of a pitch.

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.

Also, this cable was announced about a year ago: Nov 20 2015 (https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/...) :

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.

Could it be that nepotism exists in the (free) free market world? Shocking.

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.

In addition to censorship and spying, slowing down international speeds also provides competitive advantage to domestic companies.

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.

Who told you?

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).

In accordance with http://medium.com/p/6e3c4a670400 the new cable link may aid the goal of Overthrow Chinese Government to Liberate Hong Kong.

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.)

Google is blocked in mainland China too...

Thats right I forgot about that, all Google services are blocked there. So I wonder what is driving this then?

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.

Facebook is also not blocked in Taiwan.

Taiwan doesn't count as China. It's like saying South Korea is part of North Korea.

Right, I should have said mainland China. I believe its available in Shanghai as well, at least it was for a while.

But still these three together roughly 50 million people while substantial in size is a small percentage of the 1.3 billion that is China as a whole.

The peering links between the US and China, Korea, Japan, etcetera are congested. Hopefully, this will help reduce some of that congestion.

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.

> ... this cable, which will be used for bulk data transfer by 2 private companies.

... and bulk collection by the NSA too, I'm sure. Hopefully Google is still encrypting their internal traffic. Facebook probably doesn't care.

How much of that is spam and DDOS attacks?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com