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What simply occurred? Regardless of dealing with vital threats in recent times, undersea cables stay the spine of the fashionable web. Now, Meta plans to additional develop and strengthen this important infrastructure. Venture Waterworth goals to launch the world’s largest subsea cable system, using the highest-capacity know-how accessible as we speak.
Just a few months in the past, rumors surfaced about Meta’s plans to put a brand new global network of undersea cables. Now, the corporate has formally unveiled Project Waterworth, an bold and probably dangerous infrastructure initiative that can span over 50,000 kilometers and attain 5 continents.
The brand new system is designed to reinforce connectivity to the US, India, Brazil, South Africa, and different key areas for undersea infrastructure. Meta has dedicated an undisclosed quantity of funding to bolster the reliability of present undersea methods and to open three new oceanic corridors concurrently.
Meta additionally highlighted its ongoing infrastructure improvements, citing greater than 20 subsea cables deployed via varied partnerships over the previous decade. The corporate has put in cables with 24 optical fiber pairs, in comparison with the everyday eight to 16 pairs utilized in standard undersea cables.
Meta has introduced that Venture Waterworth will use the identical 24-fiber pair cable know-how deployed in earlier methods. The plan additionally contains a number of technological improvements, corresponding to a brand new routing resolution designed to put cables at depths of as much as 7,000 meters under sea stage. To guard the cables in high-risk areas corresponding to shallow waters close to coastlines, new burial strategies can be used to stop injury from ship anchors and different unspecified hazards.
Meta justifies the venture as a important infrastructure improve to advance AI improvement. The corporate claims that machine studying and generative AI fashions characterize a revolution in progress, though companies are nonetheless exploring what these agentic AI options can really contribute when it comes to effectivity and extra income.
Meta additionally argues that Venture Waterworth can convey the advantages of AI and different rising applied sciences to each nook of the globe. Nonetheless, the initiative might enhance the danger of sabotage makes an attempt. Undersea cables have turn out to be prime targets for adversarial nations like Russia and China, prompting NATO to rapidly develop countermeasures and different web connectivity routes.
