Breaking Story: Facebook Building Subsea Cable That Will Encompass The World

Several sources have whispered in my ear that META is planning a new 16 fibre pair cable that will encompass the world going from the US East Coast to the US West Coast via the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. The most ambitious subsea project ever undertaken. I do not know the exact routing. I know that the cable will launch from the American East Coast and will go down the West African Coast to South Africa and then head straight to Mumbai. It is not clear if Europe will be online or not. From Mumbai it will head straight to Australia and then up to the US West Coast. I speculate that there may be branching units to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But the basic routing is US/South Africa/India/Australia/US. What is not clear is if there will be branching units to add more countries to the cable. 

This semi-secret cable reflects META's desire for network resiliency given the four month Red Sea down time that AAE-1 and other subsea cables suffered during the first half of 2024. It appears willing to suffer a latency penalty to avoid the Red Sea as well as Egypt's expensive digital toll roads. While Egypt's terrestrial routes for submarine cables are good, they are overpriced and elevate market wavelength pricing. The design also demonstrates India's growing importance. China is off limits to Google, Facebook, and the other American Digital Titans. This makes India and Africa the two key high growth markets for the content providers. I suspect META will use the ride down the West African Coast to fill in digital coverage gaps or deploy branching units like Google's Equiano in case these smaller African states decide to join these subsea fibre optic highways. 

I speculate that the cable goes from Myrtle Beach to Lisbon and then back out to sea to West Arica's coast. It may land in many of the same countries as 2Africa, but will undoubtedly be diverse to the existing terrestrial back haul including new cable landing stations. A good guess is 320 Tbps design throughput. 

Map of the World's Fibre Optic Subsea Cables


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