Microsoft and Facebook plan to lay internet cable under the sea

Microsoft and Facebook plan to lay internet cable under the sea

                  Microsoft and Facebook announced plans to lay a fibre-optic cable 6600 kilometers long under the Atlantic Ocean.

                Undersea cables crisscross the ocean floor, as a key part of the internet’s infrastructure, enabling transcontinental exchange of digital information.

                Microsoft and Facebook say their new cable – named Marea, which means “tide” in Spanish  will be the Atlantic’s highest-capacity one yet, moving data at 160 terabits per second. Slated to be completed by October 2017, it will stretch from the US state of Virginia to Bilbao in Spain.

        Infrastructure like this will “enable customers to more quickly and reliably store, manage, transmit and access their data in the Microsoft Cloud”, said the companies in a release.

        Microsoft and Facebook aren’t the only tech giants plotting their own private cables. In 2014, Google struck deals to build two, intended to link the US with Japan and Brazil.