Facebook and Microsoft are joining forces to build a humongous undersea fiber optic cable named MAREA across the Atlantic Ocean.
Microsoft shares the big news in a blogpost it pushed out on May 26.
"Today we’re excited to announce the latest step in our global cloud infrastructure as Microsoft and Facebook announce plans to build ‘MAREA’ — a new, state-of-the art subsea cable across the Atlantic,” says Microsoft.
The construction of the said Internet cable, with a length of 6,600 km or 4,101 miles, will kick-start in August and is believed to be completed in October 2017.
Microsoft says that the infrastructure will help big in meeting the demands of quite a few customers for dependable, high-speed Internet connections for the firm’s cloud services, which include Skype, Office 365, Bing, Microsoft Azure and Xbox Live. Teaming up with Facebook makes sense as the social networking site is also presently facing the same data challenges.
The Redmond-based company goes on to say that this massive infrastructure will help customers to swiftly and reliably transmit, store, manage and access data within the Microsoft Cloud.
The director of Microsoft’s Global Network Acquisition Frank Rey believes that MAREA will mark a significant step in creating what he calls the “next generation infrastructure of the Internet.”
Boasting the capacity of 160 terabits per second, this subsea cable features eight fiber pairs. Telefónica’s telecommunications infrastructure firm Telxius will work with Facebook and Microsoft in this particular endeavor. Specifically, Telxius will manage the cable system.
It is worth mentioning that MAREA will be the very first system to connect southern Europe to the United States, particularly from Bilbao, Spain to Virginia Beach, Virginia. This system is likewise planned to network hubs located in various regions of the globe, such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
The blog adds that the two companies’ cable system will be interoperable with an array of networking equipment that will result in “lower costs” plus “easier equipment upgrades.”
In April, Facebook also introduced its new terrestrial connectivity systems dubbed Terragraph and Project ARIES in a bid to provide more affordable, faster Internet connection to people in various regions of the world.
