Update on META's 50k Kilometer Waterworth Cable Project
15 hours ago
- #META
- #telecommunications
- #subsea-cable
- META has started selecting landing sites for the Waterworth project, a subsea cable forming a 50,000 km ring around the world.
- The Waterworth project is a 24 fibre pair system, potentially achieving a design transmission rate of half a petabit per second.
- Contrary to reports of a $10 billion cost, the project is estimated to cost $2 billion or less, using standard proven technology.
- Waterworth will land in each country at two separate locations to avoid single points of failure, with terrestrial fibre linking these points.
- The project focuses on diversifying away from the Red Sea due to frequent outages, with alternatives like the SMW6 consortium's Saudi Arabian desert route.
- Sify, an Indian ISP, is emerging as a key player, hosting cables for Google and META in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam, aligning incentives through cash and bandwidth deals.