While it may be years from being a reality, tech giant Meta is currently planning a mega fiber-optic subsea internet cable. The project will not only span the world but will come at a whopping cost of $10B.
This project was first reported by a cable expert who predicts the tech giant will announce it formally next year. Speaking to a media outlet, sources familiar with the company revealed how it’s just too early to say anything as the project is in its initial stages.
Several contractors would be capable of creating the infrastructure and they could be tied with commitments to other clients. Now if this project does come into play, it’s bound to take a few years before the cable gets laid down to the ground and turned off.
Meta is already a partial owner of several dozen subsea networks. However, this one project would be the first one that it owns singlehandedly and operates alone. Search engine giant Google has a couple of its own while other big names like Amazon and Microsoft don’t have dedicated cables or any partial ownership of more.
Meta would solely be using this cable. Another interesting fact is how the company and its respective services already account for 10% of global fixed internet usage while the figures for mobile traffic stand at 22%.
For now, Facebook’s parent firm produces more revenue from international locations as compared to those in North America. Hence, such cables would provide greater ownership over the entire infrastructure. The aim would ensure services remain stable with both mobile and internet service providers. The former and the latter would ensure all users’ devices remain linked. We’ve seen Meta work on Wi-Fi and different internet projects in the past but many shut in 2022.
The new cable will run from America’s eastern coast to India and South Africa as well as the west coast. And the cable’s length could go as far as 25k miles.
That’s a safe route and would avoid any locations designated as major points of failure like the Red Sea, Egypt, Straits of Malacca, or the South China Sea. The same would be the case of leading geopolitical regions.
In the recent past, two leading undersea cables were destroyed in the Baltic Sea and investigators feel it was a Chinese trawler who dragged anchor intentionally along this seabed for the effect. It was outlined as potential deliberate sabotage from the Russian end by joining hands with forces from China. Still, no concrete evidence was revealed to the public yet on the matter.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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This project was first reported by a cable expert who predicts the tech giant will announce it formally next year. Speaking to a media outlet, sources familiar with the company revealed how it’s just too early to say anything as the project is in its initial stages.
Several contractors would be capable of creating the infrastructure and they could be tied with commitments to other clients. Now if this project does come into play, it’s bound to take a few years before the cable gets laid down to the ground and turned off.
Meta is already a partial owner of several dozen subsea networks. However, this one project would be the first one that it owns singlehandedly and operates alone. Search engine giant Google has a couple of its own while other big names like Amazon and Microsoft don’t have dedicated cables or any partial ownership of more.
Meta would solely be using this cable. Another interesting fact is how the company and its respective services already account for 10% of global fixed internet usage while the figures for mobile traffic stand at 22%.
For now, Facebook’s parent firm produces more revenue from international locations as compared to those in North America. Hence, such cables would provide greater ownership over the entire infrastructure. The aim would ensure services remain stable with both mobile and internet service providers. The former and the latter would ensure all users’ devices remain linked. We’ve seen Meta work on Wi-Fi and different internet projects in the past but many shut in 2022.
The new cable will run from America’s eastern coast to India and South Africa as well as the west coast. And the cable’s length could go as far as 25k miles.
That’s a safe route and would avoid any locations designated as major points of failure like the Red Sea, Egypt, Straits of Malacca, or the South China Sea. The same would be the case of leading geopolitical regions.
In the recent past, two leading undersea cables were destroyed in the Baltic Sea and investigators feel it was a Chinese trawler who dragged anchor intentionally along this seabed for the effect. It was outlined as potential deliberate sabotage from the Russian end by joining hands with forces from China. Still, no concrete evidence was revealed to the public yet on the matter.
Read next: Is AI Changing Search Forever? UK Users Still Stick to Traditional Methods
