After being rumored to be in the early stages of the project last year, Meta confirmed today that it’s building “Project Waterworth,” an over 50,00 km subsea cable that will connect five continents. The company has partnered on other cable projects previously, but this would be the first piece of subsea infrastructure it owns outright.
The project touches land in the US, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and is apparently breaking new ground technically, too. Meta claims Waterworth is the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world, and the company is using “first-of-its-kind routing” to place the cables as deep as possible, “at depths of up to 7,000 meters.” If cables aren’t deep enough, undersea hazards, like boats dropping and dragging their anchors, can cause permanent damage, disrupting service.
Meta’s announcement doesn’t go into detail about how the cable will be used, beyond noting that subsea cables enable “digital communication, video experiences, online transactions and more,” and that high-speed connectivity is a necessity for “AI innovation.” On their own, Meta services and platforms are said to account for about 10 percent of global fixed internet usage and 22 percent of mobile traffic, so at the very least the company’s existing businesses stand to benefit from a stable connection.
Interestingly, Meta isn’t only one backing the new project. A United States-India joint statement released after Prime Minister Modi visited the US revealed that India is financially involved in Waterworth, too. The country plans on helping to finance, maintain and repair the portions of the cable that are in the Indian Ocean.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-confirms-its-building-its-own-subsea-cable-190153227.html?src=rss
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