Facebook and Microsoft are laying cable across the Atlantic
Facebook and Microsoft have announced plans transverse the Atlantic with a giant high-speed fibre internet cable, capable of delivering data at 160Tbps.
The new MAREA (which means tide in Spanish) project will span 6,600km of ocean from Virginia Beach in the United States to Bilbao in Spain.
In a press release Microsoft says it will meet higher demand for “high speed, low latency, reliable communications” through services like Skype, Xbox Live, and Office 365.
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“As the world continues to move towards a future based on cloud computing, Microsoft is committed to building out the unprecedented level of global infrastructure required to support ever faster and even more resilient connections to our cloud services,” the company wrote.
Facebook will use the infrastructure to move data relating to Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram and indeed the social network itself.
Once MAREA is complete, Microsoft and Facebook will be able to route the data to other territories like Africa, Asia and the middle East more efficiently.