Superfast undersea mega-cable to link US and Spain
Fiona Govan · 27 May 2016, 11:20
Published: 27 May 2016 11:20 GMT+02:00
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The underwater cable will stretch 6,600km between Virginia Beach on the US east coast to Bilbao in northern Spain.
The new cable, which will be no wider than a domestic hosepipe, will be able to handle record amounts of data, at over 160 terrabytes per second it will be 16 million times faster than a domestic broadband connection.
Source: Microsoft
The mega fast bandwidth will allow Facebook to pursue its goal of encouraging users to provide live video and meet in virtual reality.
The construction project named Marea - tide in Spanish - will be managed by an infrastructure-focused subsidiary of Spanish telecom provider Telefónica.
Work will begin in August and should be completed by October 2017.
"MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic - featuring eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps," explained Frank Rey, director, global network acquisition, Microsoft Corp in a statement.
"This marks an important new step in building the next generation infrastructure of the Internet," he said.
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