Tech giant Meta is planning to build an undersea fiber optic cable of its own to improve the reliability of its internet infrastructure. The project is expected to cost more than $10 billion and will span about 40,000 kilometers across the globe.
Remarkably, Meta will be the sole owner and user of the fiber optic cable and will control its operation and maintenance. The cable will be laid from the east coast of the United States, across the ocean to Cape Town, South Africa, and back along the west coast of India, Australia and the United States.
The project is now taking shape, but the physical assets and specific details have yet to materialize. For its part, Meta has remained silent on sensitive topics such as budget. The company is expected to disclose more progress on this project in early 2025, including route planning, fiber optic cable capacity, and the core rationale for construction.
It should be noted, however, that there are only a limited number of companies with such undersea cable capacity globally, so it will take Meta some time to implement this project. In fact, several large tech companies, including Google, have booked the services of SubCom, one of the world's top four submarine fiber optic cable developers, in a highly competitive market.
It's worth noting that Meta is not inexperienced in the submarine fiber optic cable space. According to Telegeography statistics, Meta currently has partial interests in 16 existing submarine cable networks, including the high-profile 2Africa submarine cable, and these partners also include well-known companies such as Orange, Vodafone and China Mobile.
