Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is the second-biggest driver of internet usage globally. Its properties — and their billions of users — account for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic. Meta's investments into artificial intelligence stand to boost that usage even further. So to make sure it will have reliable infrastructure to support that business, Meta is taking the pipes into its own hands.
TechCrunch has confirmed with sources close to the company that Meta plans to build a new, major, fibre-optic subsea cable extending around the world — a 40,000+ kilometer project that could total more than $10 billion of investment. Critically, Meta will be the sole owner and user of this subsea cable — a first for the company and thus representing a milestone for its infrastructure efforts.
Sunil Tagare, a subsea cable expert (and pioneer in the space, as founder of Flag Telecom), who was the first to report Meta's plans back in October, told TechCrunch that the plan is to start with a budget of $2 billion but as the project builds out that figure is likely to go up to more than $10 billion as the project extends into years of work.
Sources close to Meta confirmed the project but said it is still in its early stages. Plans have been laid out, but physical assets have not, and they declined to discuss budget. The expectation is that Meta will talk more publicly about it in early 2025, when it will confirm plans for the cable, including intended route, capacity, and some of the reasoning behind building it.
It would be years before it is fully operational, were the strategy to be followed through, given that the limited number of companies, like SubCom, that are capable of building out the infrastructure already have large customers, like Google, reserving its services.
"There's a real tight supply on cable ships," said Ranulf Scarborough, a submarine cable industry analyst. "They're expensive at the minute and booked out several years ahead. Finding the available resources to do it soon is a challenge." One likely scenario could involve building in segments, he added.
The cable, when completed, would give Meta a dedicated pipe for data traffic around the world. The planned route of the cable, says sources, currently sees it spanning from the east coast of the U.S. to India via South Africa, and then to the west coast of the U.S. from India via Australia — making a "W" shape around the globe, as visualized here by Tagare:
Meta's infrastructure work is overseen by Santosh Janardhan, who is the company's head of global infrastructure and co-head of engineering. The company has teams globally who look at and plan out its infrastructure — and it has had some significant industry figures work for it in the past. In the case of this upcoming project, it is being conceived out of the company's South Africa operation, according to sources.
Fiber-optic subsea cables have been a part of communications infrastructure for the last 40 years. What's significant here is who is putting the money down to build and own it — and for what purposes.
Meta's plans underscore how investment and ownership of subsea networks has shifted in recent years from consortiums involving telecoms carriers, to now also include big tech giants.
Meta is not new to the subsea game. According to telecom analysts Telegeography, Meta is part-owner of 16 existing networks, including most recently the 2Africa cable that encircles the continent (others in that project are carriers including Orange, Vodafone, China Mobile, Bayobab/MTN and more).
However, this new cable project would be the first wholly owned by Meta itself.
That would put Meta into the same category as Google, which has involvement in some 33 different routes, including a few regional efforts in which it is the sole owner, per Telegeography's tracking. Other big tech companies that are either part owners or capacity buyers in subsea cables include Amazon and Microsoft (neither of which are whole-owners of any route themselves).
