Google, Facebook team on undersea cable from LA to Hong Kong

The Pacific Light Cable Network will allow for a whole lot of speedy data transfers.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor

Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.

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Edward Moyer

Oct. 12, 2016 11:18 a.m. PT

Question: How many high-definition videoconference calls can take place between LA and Hong Kong at the same time?

Answer: 80 million -- once a new project from Google and Facebook is completed.

That's the word from Google's Cloud Platform unit, which said Wednesday that Google is teaming with Facebook and communications companies Pacific Light Data Communication and TE Subcom to build an undersea fiber-optic cable between the two cities.

"The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) will have 12,800 km of fiber and an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps, making it the highest-capacity trans-Pacific route," the unit said in a blog post.

The cable, scheduled to be up and running by 2018, is designed to bring greater bandwidth, shorter wait times and more security to users of Google's Cloud Platform as well as to Facebook users.

It's the sixth undersea cable Google has taken an ownership stake in.