The two Internet giants publicly announced they will build the longest and highest capacity undersea fiber-optic cable between the two continents.
According to CNN, even though both companies are blocked in mainland China, Facebook and Google are teaming up to build a huge Internet cable and to speed Internet traffic between North America and Asia under the Pacific Ocean to China.
Once accomplished, the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) will stretch 8,000 miles from Los Angeles to Hong Kong with an projected capacity of 120 terabits-per-second, as reported by Huffington Post.
This is where their services can be viewed and that serves as a key network hub for Asia.
Five months ago, Facebook and Microsoft teamed up to build a new 4,100-mile cable connecting Virginia to Spain. PLCN is the sixth undersea cable that Google has invested in.
Accordingly, the internet giants handle an enormous amount of data every day. With the innovation and expansion of their Instead of relying on telecom firms to provide the infrastructure to carry that information around the world, tech companies are now managing and investing on doing it themselves.
This project will be the first time to connect Los Angeles and Hong Kong. It will have more bandwidth than any other linking the Americas and Asia, according to Google.
It will have enough to capacity to handle 80 million high-definition video conference calls between the continents at the same time.
Furthermore, Huffington Post also reported that the move highlights the larger role that tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are playing in the construction of telecommunications infrastructure.
These underwater cables will help boost the total bandwidth available not only to the tech giants that build them, but also for everyone.
They improve the resilience of the global Internet by increasing the number of routes that data can travel across the oceans. They also give Facebook and Google more control over the infrastructure they depend on.
As these companies grow and dominate the Internet, they're increasingly independent of the infrastructure that actually defines it and evolving into networks that stand on their own.
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