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Meta announced Friday that it will build a 50,000-kilometer (31,000-mile) undersea cable connecting five continents to carry data, including for artificial intelligence development. The cable will link the US, South Africa, India, Brazil, and "other regions," the company said in a blog post.
Global digital communication relies on a vast network of undersea conduits, with roughly 1.2 million kilometres of cable already installed, according to a 2024 report by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The links can be short hops between countries or globe-spanning systems linking multiple continents. Each is made up of multiple pairs of fibre-optic cables in an armoured sheath that may be buried several metres under the sea bed for protection.
Data-hungry digital giants like Meta have in recent years muscled into the world of subsea cables that was once the province of dedicated telecoms providers.
Meta said its latest cable project represented a "multi-billion-dollar, multi-year investment" -- a relative drop in the bucket compared to the sector's tens of billions annually in planned artificial intelligence investments.
Google and Meta's pushes, whether joining cable-building consortiums to part-own new infrastructure or going it alone, have been especially intensive given the vast appetite for data from their platforms like YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.
The new "Project Waterworth" cable will be Meta's third as a sole owner, according to Telegeography's listings -- well behind Google with 16.
Meta's first cable, "Anjana" linking the US and Spain, is set to come online early this year.
"Waterworth" is named for a late Meta employee, Gary Waterworth, who worked for five years at the US giant after a career largely spent at Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN).
The French cable-laying firm is one of only a few worldwide capable of installing the hardware, alongside America's SubCom, Japan's NEC and China's HMN.
Every year brings around 200 incidents of damage to cables that could otherwise endanger great swaths of economic activity. Meta's "Waterworth" route avoids geopolitical hotspots like the South China Sea, subject to dispute between Beijing and its neighbours, and the Red Sea.
The Facebook owner also said the cable project would provide "the abundant, high speed connectivity needed to drive AI innovation".
