Meta is rumored to be planning a new fiber-optic subsea cable which will extend from the East Coast of the US to South Africa, India, and Australia, before looping back to the West Coast.
Sunil Tagare, a subsea cable expert, told News that Meta aims to maintain full ownership over the project, which he predicts could ultimately cost them over $10 billion. Tagara expects Meta to go public with the cable in 2025, when it will reveal details such as its final capacity, its intended route, and why they are deciding to build the cable privately.
But the ambitious project 25,000-mile project could take years to come to fruition. Ranulf Scarborough, a submarine cable industry analyst, told News that there is a “real tight supply” on the cable ships that are required to build these fiber optic undersea cables.
“They’re expensive at the minute and booked out several years ahead,” he told the publication. “Finding the available resources to do it soon is a challenge.”
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As a result, he thinks that Meta could end up building the vast cable in segments.
Undersea cables like the one Meta plans can represent vitally important parts of a country’s digital infrastructure. This makes them potential targets of sabotage by bad actors, such as in the recent case of a Chinese commercial ship allegedly attempting to cut undersea cables in Northern Europe’s Baltic Sea.
To avoid potentially disastrous issues like this, Tagara told News Meta will try and avoid “major single points of failure” where there is major geopolitical tension. This includes areas such as the Near East’s Red Sea, the South China Sea, Egypt, Marseilles, the Straits of Malacca, and Singapore.
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Scarborough, the telecoms analyst, told News he believes that part of Meta’s motivation for the project is wanting to do “everything they can to ensure customer experience,” for example, ensuring high-quality video streaming for its users.
“Frankly, who’s going to rely on traditional telcos anymore? Tech companies are now independent,” he added. “They’ve realized they’ve got to build it themselves.”
Meta isn’t the only big tech firm planning ambitious undersea cables. In October 2023, Google announced a subsea cable project that will connect the US, Fiji, French Polynesia, and Australia in the South Pacific, dubbed Honomoana and Tabua.
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