After being rumored to be within the early levels of the challenge final 12 months, Meta confirmed right this moment that it's constructing "Undertaking Waterworth," an over 50,000 km subsea cable that may join 5 continents. The corporate has partnered on different cable initiatives beforehand, however this is able to be the primary piece of subsea infrastructure it owns outright.
The challenge touches land within the US, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and is outwardly breaking new floor technically, too. Meta claims Waterworth is the longest 24 fiber pair cable challenge on the planet, and the corporate is utilizing "first-of-its-kind routing" to put the cables as deep as doable, "at depths of as much as 7,000 meters." If cables aren't deep sufficient, undersea hazards, like boats dropping and dragging their anchors, may cause everlasting injury, disrupting service.
Meta's announcement doesn't go into element about how the cable will likely be used, past noting that subsea cables allow "digital communication, video experiences, on-line transactions and extra," and that high-speed connectivity is a necessity for "AI innovation." On their very own, Meta companies and platforms are mentioned to account for about 10 % of world mounted web utilization and 22 % of cell visitors, so on the very least the corporate's present companies stand to profit from a secure connection.
A United States-India joint assertion launched after Prime Minister Modi visited the US "welcomed" the announcement. It additionally notes that India itends to assist to finance, preserve and restore undersea cables within the Indian Ocean. A Meta spokesperson clarified that India isn’t concerned within the financing of Undertaking Waterworth.
Replace, February 14, 5:30PM ET: This text was modified after publish to make clear that India isn’t concerned financially with Undertaking Waterworth. We remorse the error.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-confirms-its-building-its-own-subsea-cable-190153227.html?src=rss
