A cable-laying ship. No more details about the operation has been spelt out yet. Photo: Meta
Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) has announced a plan to lay 50,000km of subsea cable that will span the planet.
The plan was announced in a blog post co-written by Meta’s vice-president for Network Engineering, Gaya Nagarajan, and its global head of Network Investments, Alex-Handrah Aime.
They claim that Project Waterworth, once complete, will connect five major continents make it the world’s longest subsea cable project, using the latest maximum-capacity technology.
A map of its planned route sees the cable cut across the Ring of Fire tectonic belt of volcanoes and earthquakes in at least two areas.
The cable is to due to wind past Cape York Peninsula and south of Indonesia, where the 2004 Aceh earthquake spawned a tsunami that ended up killing more than 227,000 people.
“This project will enable greater economic co-operation, facilitate digital inclusion, and open opportunities for technological development in these regions,” Aime wrote.
“For example, in India, where we’ve already seen significant growth and investment in digital infrastructure, Waterworth will help accelerate this progress and support the country’s ambitious plans for its digital economy.”
Meta says subsea cables projects account for more than 95 per cent of intercontinental traffic across the oceans such as digital communication, video experiences and online transactions.
No figure or timeframe was supplied beyond only that Project Waterworth will be a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year project that will open three new ocean corridors to high-speed connectivity for AI.
Nagarajan says Meta and partners have developed more than 20 subsea cables including industry-leading 24-fibre pair cables.
“With Project Waterworth, we continue to advance engineering design to maintain cable resilience, enabling us to build the longest 24-fibre pair cable project in the world,” he says.
“We are deploying first-of-its-kind routing, maximising the cable laid in deep water — at depths up to 7000 metres — using enhanced burial techniques in high-risk fault areas, such as shallow waters near the coast, to avoid damage from ship anchors and other hazards.”
Underseas cables in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere in Europe have been attacked and cut by Russian vessels prompting greater NATO surveillance and protection.
The route for Project Waterworth as envisaged by Meta. Image: Meta
