Facebook and Microsoft to build subsea cable across Atlantic
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The new MAREA cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers.
MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic.
Microsoft and Facebook are collaborating on this system to accelerate the development of the next-generation of Internet infrastructure and support the explosion of data consumption and rapid growth of their respective cloud and online services.
MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps.
From Northern Virginia to Spain and then to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
This route is south of other transatlantic cable systems, thereby helping ensure more resilient and reliable connections for customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond.
Microsoft and Facebook designed MAREA to be interoperable with a variety of networking equipment.
This new "open" design brings significant benefits for customers: lower costs and easier equipment upgrades which leads to faster growth in bandwidth rates since the system can evolve at the pace of optical technology innovation. ■