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Meta is rumored to be planning a new fiber-optic subsea cable that will extend from the East Coast of the US to South Africa, India, and Australia, before looping back to the West Coast.
Sunil Tagare, a subsea cable expert, told TechCrunch that Meta aims to maintain full ownership over the project, which he predicts could ultimately cost over $10 billion. Tagare expects Meta to go public with news of the cable in 2025, when it will reveal details such as its final capacity, its intended route, and why Meta is building the cable privately.
But the ambitious 25,000-mile project could take years to come to fruition. Ranulf Scarborough, a submarine cable industry analyst, told TechCrunch that there is a “real tight supply” on the cable ships that are required to build these fiber optic undersea cables, so he thinks Meta could end up building the vast cable in segments.
Undersea cables are a vitally important parts of a country’s digital infrastructure. This makes them potential targets of sabotage by bad actors, such as in the recent case of a Chinese commercial ship allegedly attempting to cut undersea cables in Northern Europe’s Baltic Sea.
To avoid potentially disastrous issues like this, Tagare told TechCrunch Meta will try and avoid “major single points of failure” where there is major geopolitical tension. This includes the Red Sea, the South China Sea, Egypt, Marseilles, the Straits of Malacca, and Singapore.
Scarborough, the telecoms analyst, told TechCrunch that part of Meta's motivation for the project is wanting to do “everything they can to ensure customer experience.” For example, ensuring high-quality video streaming for its users.
Meta isn't the only big tech firm planning ambitious undersea cables. In October 2023, Google announced a subsea cable project that will connect the US, Fiji, French Polynesia, and Australia in the South Pacific, dubbed Honomoana and Tabua.