Why does Meta want to build its own undersea fiber optic cable?

There are several reasons why building undersea fiber optic cables is attractive to major technology companies like Meta.

According to TechCrunch , Meta is planning to build a global undersea fiber optic cable and will be the sole owner. Santosh Janardhan, Meta's Global Infrastructure Director, is in charge of the project.

Why would Meta want to do this?

First, sole ownership of the cable route would provide the ability to support traffic across its own assets, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

According to business reports, Meta earns more money outside of North America than in its home market. Prioritizing its own undersea cable may help ensure service quality. Of course, the company still has to negotiate with carriers in various countries to provide service to users' devices.

Meta is planning to build a global undersea fiber optic cable network over 40,000km long. Photo: techcabal

Meta, like Google, is ramping up its underwater investments, claiming that projects like Marea in Europe and others in Southeast Asia have contributed more than "half a trillion USD" to the region's economies .

However, there is a more practical incentive for these investments: Technology companies—rather than traditional telecommunications carriers, owners of undersea cables—want more direct ownership of the pathways necessary to deliver content, advertising, and more to users worldwide.

They make money from end-user products and do everything they can to ensure a positive customer experience, whether it's video distribution or other content. According to submarine cable industry analyst Ranulf Scarborough, they don't want to rely on traditional telecommunications companies and prefer independence.

The second reason is geopolitics. Submarine cables have been targeted for sabotage on numerous occasions. In November 2024, a submarine cable in the Baltic Sea was cut.

Sources close to Meta say the new cable route helps them "avoid geopolitically tense areas." On his blog, submarine cable expert Sunil Tagare points out that the route will bypass the Red Sea, the South China Sea, Egypt, Marseilles, the Malacca Strait, and Singapore.

The third reason, according to Tagare, relates to the cable's termination in India. He believes Meta will leverage it to build domestic data center capabilities, particularly for training and working with AI models. The undersea cable could play a role in that effort.

He stated that India's bandwidth costs are only a fraction of those in the US, and many in India were abuzz following Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's recent visit. In a meeting with Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Huang spoke about the country building its own AI infrastructure. Reliance and other suppliers will be using Nvidia's Blackwell chips in their future AI data centers.

"India could become the AI ​​training capital of the world," Tagare said in an interview. He believes Meta might also want to build its AI training program in the country around that infrastructure.

AI is a crucial part of Meta's infrastructure roadmap. But beyond that, India is a huge market, estimated to have the most users to date on Facebook (over 375 million users), Instagram (363 million), and WhatsApp (536 million). They show enthusiasm for new features like AI tools. With strong investments pouring into the domestic data center market, India still has significant growth potential.

Sources close to the project say it's too early to say whether AI is part of Meta's equation for this project. It's just one in a long list of considerations and possibilities, similar to whether Meta intends to open up capacity to other users.

(According to TechCrunch)

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/ly-do-meta-muon-xay-cap-quang-bien-rieng-2347151.html