Facebook and Microsoft are building a huge trans-Atlantic data cable
The high-capacity system should be ready by October 2017. Microsoft and Facebook today have announced a partnership to build a massive underwater data cable connecting the US to Europe, an effort that'll help the two internet giants better move data back and forth around the world. The cable, dubbed " MAREA," should be ready by October 2017 and will have an insane estimated data capacity of 160Tbps, making it the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic. It's not hard to understand why having a better infrastructure for transmitting data is important to both Facebook and Microsoft. Facebook has a whopping 1.6 billion users, and that's not counting traffic from other hugely popular services like Instagram and Whatsapp. For Microsoft's part, its Azure cloud services use a ton of bandwidth, and that's without mentioning its other cloud-based products like Bing, Office, Skype and Xbox Live. The MAREA system isn't ...