Again in November, we broke the information that Meta — proprietor of Fb, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with billions of customers accounting for 10% of all mounted and 22% of all cellular visitors — was near asserting work on a significant new, $10 billion+ subsea cable mission to attach up the globe. The purpose was to offer Meta extra management over the way it runs its personal providers.
As we speak, Meta confirmed particulars of our report: Project Waterworth is the official name, and will probably be 50,000 kilometers lengthy when accomplished, making it the world’s longest subsea cable mission.
Lining up with what we had heard in regards to the mission months in the past, the community will join 5 continents, with touchdown factors in the USA, Brazil, India, South Africa, and different key areas. Fb notably calls out the alternatives in India, and the position that the community will play in the way it rolls out AI providers globally, as two key causes for constructing the community.
By way of the community itself, Meta says will probably be breaking new floor with its structure, utilizing 24 fiber pair cables, and what it describes as first-of-its-kind routing, “maximizing the cable laid in deep water — at depths as much as 7,000 meters” together with new burial methods to cut back faults in areas deemed “excessive danger,” both due to geographical points, or politics — and generally each.
Beforehand, we famous that geopolitics is among the main elements out there influencing Meta to construct its personal subsea infrastructure. That has certainly performed a task right here.
On Thursday, the White Home revealed a joint leaders statement from U.S. President Trump and India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, which detailed a prolonged record of areas the place the 2 international locations would cooperate. Tucked into that lengthy doc was a dedication to co-developing undersea applied sciences as a part of a protection partnership, in addition to a notice about Meta’s 50,000-kilometer Waterworth mission, and India’s position in financing a few of it.
“Supporting better Indian Ocean connectivity, the leaders additionally welcomed Meta’s announcement of a multi-billion, multi-year funding in an undersea cable mission that may start work this 12 months,” the assertion famous. “India intends to spend money on upkeep, restore and financing of undersea cables within the Indian Ocean, utilizing trusted distributors.”
As for what the cable might be used for: In November, considered one of our sources postulated that the expansion of AI knowledge facilities and cloud providers in India, the world’s most populous nation, was a major motive for Meta’s mission within the first place.
Meta has declined to remark to us on extra particular particulars however in its weblog submit offered some high-level concepts of purposes and highlighted the nation and AI.
“Digital communication, video experiences and on-line transactions,” are among the many purposes that the subsea cable will allow, based on the submit, penned by Meta’s VP of engineering Gaya Nagarajan and its world head of community investments Alex-Handrah Aimé. “Challenge Waterworth might be a multi-billion greenback, multi-year funding to strengthen the size and reliability of the world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the considerable, excessive velocity connectivity wanted to drive AI innovation all over the world.”
This isn’t Meta’s first subsea cable effort, neither is it the one main know-how firm to construct its personal subsea infrastructure.
Based on telecom analysts TeleGeography, Meta is a component proprietor of 16 current networks, together with the 2Africa cable that encircles the continent (others in that mission are carriers, together with Orange, Vodafone, China Cellular, Bayobab/MTN, and extra). This new cable mission can be the primary wholly owned by Meta itself.
That will put Meta into the identical class as Google, which has involvement in some 33 totally different routes, together with a number of regional efforts wherein it’s the sole proprietor, per TeleGeography’s monitoring. Different Huge Tech firms which can be both half house owners or capability consumers in subsea cables embody Amazon and Microsoft, neither of that are complete house owners of any route themselves.