Here is some news you don’t read every day: Microsoft and Facebook today announced that they are teaming up to build a subsea cable across the Atlantic that will connect Virginia Beach, Virginia, with Bilbao, Spain. The companies say the so-called MAREA cable will allow them to “meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers.”
Construction is scheduled to start in August and the companies expect the process to be complete in October 2017. Once operational, MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic (at least for the time being) and will feature eight fiber pairs. The cable was designed to handle 160Tbps and will use a different route from other existing cable systems that also connect the U.S. and Europe. READ MORE
