Meta to lay $10b subsea communications cable around the world
Facebook owner to go it alone for the first time on global data cable
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is planning to lay a $10 billion (£7.85bn) subsea communications cable that will straddle the world.
Meta will be the sole owner and operator of the 25,000 mile/40,000 kilometre cable: a first for the company. Meta has invested in around 16 other major subsea communications cable projects over the past decade, but hasn’t owned any of them outright.
The cable will route down the US east coast, cross the Atlantic to South Africa and curl around the horn of Africa before crossing the Indian Ocean. It will connect at Mumbai and navigate around India’s coastline, with a spur off to Chennai, before routing back to the US west coast, via Darwin in the north of Australia.
Significantly, perhaps, the route of the cable network avoids the South China Sea, one of the world’s most congested seaways, which would duplicate multiple other submarine cable networks and, more ominously, is also the site of increasing geopolitical competition.
However, given the limited availability of subsea cable laying ships it won’t be until 2025 that Meta is even able to plan out the project in detail, which will take years to complete. Indeed, cable laying ships are typically booked years in advance and the limited availability means rates are not cheap.
Meta has yet to confirm the reports, first aired on Techcrunch.
The company’s first investment was in the Asia-Pacific Gateway connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, completed in November 2016, followed by the MAREA cable across the North Atlantic between the US and Spain. That was completed in 2018 with Microsoft and telecoms infrastructure company Telxius.
Other communications cable investments include Echo and Bifrost, both trans-Pacific communications cables that connect Singapore, Guam and US North America; it also invested in the 2Africa cable that rings Africa, along with Vodafone, China Mobile and Orange.
Meta has also invested in projects adopting experimental technologies, such as the use of repeaters powered by an aluminium conductor, instead of copper. The Havhingsten cable, completed in 2022, was laid between Dublin, Ireland across the Irish Sea to Blackpool, via the Isle of Man; then across northern England to Seaton Sluice in Northumberland and hence under sea to Denmark.
Computing says:
As well as the South China Sea, this cable avoids other geopolitical hot spots around the world like the Red Sea and North Sea, where cables frequently fall victim to sabotage.