Facebook halts project for undersea info cable to Hong Kong
Facebook has made a decision to halt its efforts to create a trans-Pacific undersea cable that could have connected California and Hong Kong, because of tensions between the USA and China.
"Due to ongoing issues from the U.S. government about direct communication links between your USA and Hong Kong, we've made a decision to withdraw our FCC request," a Facebook spokesperson advised AFP on Wednesday, referring to the Federal Communications Commission.
"We anticipate working with all the celebrations to reconfigure the machine to meet the concerns of the U.S. government," the spokesperson added.
The social networking giant and several telecom companies filed their first construction permit in 2018, to connect two sites in California to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The project was likely to facilitate communications through fiber optics with the capacity of carrying large volumes of data with suprisingly low waiting times.
But Washington resisted, due to perceived potential national security risks regarding China, which has tightened its control over Hong Kong.
In June, the US Section of Justice recommended a trans-Pacific undersea cable proposed by Google and Fb bypass Hong Kong.
The cable, named the Pacific Light Cable Network, was actually intended to link the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
The Hong Kong landing station "would expose U.S. communications traffic to collection" by Beijing, the department said.
The FCC gave Google permission in April 2020 to use the hyperlink between North America and Taiwan.
Source: japantoday.com
