Facebook And Microsoft now became partners to lay the highest-capacity subsea internet cable to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean. They have announced a partnership regarding this new project today. The will lay these cables starting with hubs connecting Northern Virginia to Bilbao, Spain.
The cable is named “MAREA” after the Spanish word for “tide” and it will be capable of 160 terabits per second of bandwidth. The cable will stretch up to more than 4,100 miles of ocean in a submarine cable system.
Facebook and Microsoft hired the infrastructure company owned by global communications giant Telefónica, Telxius. It will manage “MAREA” and expand the network hubs from Europe to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The construction will begin in August 2016 with a goal of October 2017 to complete the cable.
Frank Rey, Microsoft’s director of global network acquisition, said in a statement that the initiative is taken in order to serve customers better and provide the type of reliable and low-latency connectivity they deserve. He added, “we are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to continuously upgrade both the Microsoft Cloud and the global internet infrastructure.“
He also said that,”This marks an important new step in building the next-generation infrastructure of the internet.“
For tech companies, which have in the past joined telecom consortiums that already operate undersea cables rather than financing new cables outright, this operation will mark a turning point even with Telxius onboard.
Both the companies have an ultimate goal to move information around the world with this project. The project will help Facebook and Microsoft to travel information to their enormous and expanding networks of data centers at greater speed using extra reliable equipment.
Facebook hosts the output of 1.65 billion users where Microsoft manages a robust suite of online services including Azure, Bing, Xbox Live and Office 365. Both of them maintain massive cloud computing operations and are now moving into the infrastructure business to expand their business.
Amazon with its shipping business and Facebook and Microsoft are doing the same with data operations to reach other parts of the globe.
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27 May 2016
Avni S.Singh