China’s 7,500-Mile Undersea Cable to Europe Fuels Internet Feud
The U.S. and China are vying to control the world’s digital infrastructure, and the new “Peace Cable” has Europe caught in the middle.
An undersea cable will emerge later this year near a popular sunbathing spot in the French port of Marseille. The cable, known as Peace, will travel over land from China to Pakistan, where it heads underwater and snakes along for about 7,500 miles of ocean floor via the Horn of Africa before terminating in France.
The Peace cable, which is being built by Chinese companies, will be able to transport enough data in one second for 90,000 hours of Netflix, and will largely serve to make service faster for Chinese companies doing business in Europe and Africa. “This is a plan to project power beyond China toward Europe and Africa,” says Jean-Luc Vuillemin, the head of international networks at Orange SA, the French phone company that will operate the cable’s landing station in Marseille.