Microsoft and Facebook to lay 160Tbit/s submarine cable between US and Europe

Microsoft and Facebook announce a new internet connection between the state of Virginia in the US and the city of Bilbao in Spain. The construction of the 6600km long fiber optic cable will start in August and should be ready in October 2017.

The companies call the cable Marea, the Spanish word for tide. According to Microsoft, it is the cable with the highest capacity that will be located in the Atlantic Ocean. The cable is provided with eight fiber pairs, the design is estimated to be good for a capacity of 160Tbit/s, or 20 terabytes per second.

Microsoft and Facebook have commissioned Telxius to lay the cable. That company will continue to manage the cable after construction and sell remaining capacity to third parties. Telxius is the infrastructure arm of communications giant Telefónica.

The cable system will be located between Virginia Beach and Bilbao and will be further connected to hubs to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The new cable route is south of the existing transatlantic cables, which make landfall in the US mainly around New York and New Jersey.

The companies say they need the submarine cable to handle the increasing data flow between data centers in the US and Europe. Facebook has 1.65 billion users worldwide and Microsoft plans to offer its Azure cloud service in 32 regions of the world. Microsoft also invested in undersea network cables in 2015. Google also has its own cables in the ocean.