HKA Consortium Withdraws Application for Submarine Cable Landing License in the US

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has decided to abandon the Hong Kong-Americas (HKA) submarine cable project and withdraw the application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for submarine cable landing license in the United States. Facebook is the landing party in the United States for the HKA consortium comprising Facebook, China Telecom, China Unicom, RTI Express, Tata Communication and Telstra.

Facebook had withdrawn the application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "due to ongoing concerns from the US government about direct communications links between the United States and Hong Kong," Facebook spokesperson said. 

According to Facebook, the HKA consortium is looking forward to working on the reconfiguration of the HKA cable system, so as to meet the concerns of the US government.

The HKA cable system was planned to have a straight connection between Hong Kong and Los Angeles in the U.S., with branching units to Taiwan and Manchester, California.

The HKA project is one of the 4 subsea cable projects which were planned to connect Hong Kong with the United States, others including PLCN, HK-G and BtoBE.

PLCN, HKA, and BtoBE have all withdrawn the applications to the FCC for submarine cable landing license in the United States. BtoBE consortium has reconfigured the system to CAP-1 connecting the Philippines and the US, withouth Hong Kong.

HK-G cable system is invested completely by US companies, RTI and Google, to connect Hong Kong and Guam. Its application to the FCC is still under reviewing.