Meta to build 'ambitious' 50,000 km subsea cable around the world
Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is aiming to build the world’s longest subsea cable.
Project Waterworth will see a 50,000-kilometre-long subsea cable connect five continents from its laying point 7,000 m under the ocean.
Over 99 per cent of international data exchanges are carried by underwater cables, according to the International Telecommunications Union.
Meta’s cable would use a 24 fibre-pair system, which will give the connections the cable makes to the United States, India, Brazil, and South Africa a "higher capacity," Meta continued.
The tech giant added that the subsea cable will "enable greater economic cooperation, facilitate digital inclusion, and open opportunities for technological development in these regions".
It is also envisaged that it will support the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) projects.
"Project Waterworth will be a multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment to strengthen the scale and reliability of the world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the abundant, high-speed connectivity needed to drive AI innovation around the world," the company wrote in a blog post.
Meta didn’t specify a timeline for the project or the budget for its implementation.
Attacks on subsea cables
The world has just under 600 cable systems with 1700 landings that are either active or under construction, according to telecommunications firm TeleGeography.
Meta has already developed 20 subsea cables, including the 2Africa Pearls extension that connects Africa, Europe, and Asia with a 45,000-kilometre-long cable.
Meta is also one of several US-based Big Tech firms that are starting to invest more in cable infrastructure.
In 2024 alone, Google announced a $1 billion (€960 million) investment in two new cables through the Pacific Ocean to Japan and that it would build a subsea cable to connect Africa to Australia.
Subsea cables have been a focus in recent months due to their vulnerability with a string of investigations taking place in Baltic Sea states over alleged “sabotage” attempts, most often by Russian vessels.
NATO said it is stepping up patrols in the Baltic Sea as a result and is planning to deploy an AI tool to help detect ships that are behaving suspiciously.
The persistent attacks on subsea cables are the "most active threat" to Western infrastructure, another NATO expert told Euronews.