The Hong Kong-Americas (HKA) cable, announced in January 2018, will have a total design capacity of 76.8Tbps, or 12.8Tbps per fibre pair and is due for service in late 2020.
Partners in the project include two of the three Chinese carriers as well as Tata Communications and Telstra. But Edge USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook, will be the dominant shareholder, according to yesterday’s filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has the contract to build the cable.
The HKA cable will be 13,780km in total length, including branches. There will be two landing stations in the US, at Hermosa Beach and Manchester, both in California, and two in Asia, at Chung Hom Kok, Hong Kong, and at Toucheng, Taiwan.
Facebook and Telstra will own the Toucheng branch, with Facebook having a two-thirds stake.
China Telecom and China Telecom Global (CTG) will jointly have a 16.6667% voting interest in the main cable; China Unicom will have a 16.667% voting interest; Tata Communications and Telstra will each have an 8.333% voting interest. Another company, RTI Express, which owns a landing station at Hermosa Beach, will also have an 8.333% voting interest.
RTI Infrastructure, associated with RTI Express, will grant Facebook’s Edge USA an indefeasible right of use to facilities in Hermosa Beach, part of the Los Angeles conurbation, for initial 15-year terms, with the option of two five-year extensions. Edge USA will also build a new cable landing station in Manchester, California, about 150km north of San Francisco.
The Hermosa Beach terminal equipment will not be at the RTI cable landing station, but instead within two of CoreSite’s highly secure data centres in Los Angeles – One Wilshire and Wilshire Annex.
At the Asian end of the HKA cable, CTG will control the Hong Kong landing station, subleased from Telstra. And Telstra will control the Taiwan landing station.
