Meta has announced plans to build a 50 ,000 km long submarine cable around the world, UNN reports, citing the company and the BBC.
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The tech giant said that Project Waterworth, which will connect the US, India, South Africa, Brazil and other regions, will be the world's longest undersea cable when completed.
We are announcing our most ambitious submarine cable project yet: Project Waterworth. When completed, the project will span the five major continents and cover more than 50,000 km (more than the circumference of the Earth), making it the world's longest submarine cable project using the highest performance technology available
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is looking to expand its tech presence beyond social media, including artificial intelligence (AI) and the infrastructure that supports it, explains BBC.
The company said its new submarine cable project will provide "industry-leading connectivity" to five major continents and help support its AI projects.
Meta says the multibillion-dollar project is aimed at strengthening connectivity on the world's digital highways.
Meta said in its announcement of the Waterworth project that it will lay its cable system at depths of up to 7,000 meters and plans to "use advanced burial techniques in high-risk fault zones, such as shallow waters off the coast, to avoid damage from ship anchors and other hazards.
According to the company, this cable will be the longest to date, using a system of 24 fiber optic pairs, which will provide it with higher bandwidth.
Paolo Pescatore, a telecommunications and technology analyst, said that this shows Meta's ambitions.
"Meta has demonstrated a strong desire to take over a larger part of the connectivity segment," he said.
"This is another demonstration of how the company is committed to outperforming the competition by providing users with a unique experience through the tight integration of hardware, software, platform and its commitment to connectivity," he added.
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Submarine cables are becoming increasingly important as they provide the means to power a variety of digital services and high-speed data transmission around the world.
One of the regularly quoted statistics is that more than 95% of the world's Internet traffic is transmitted via submarine cables.
TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research firm, claims that there are more than 600 well-known submarine cable systems in the world today.
This includes the 2Africa cable, supported by Meta and mobile operators such as Orange, Vodafone and China Mobile, which connects three continents and covers 45,000 km.
Technology companies, which are the main providers of web services, have invested huge sums in cable infrastructure.
Google said it will build the first submarine cable connecting Africa and Australia in 2024 and announced a $1 billion investment to strengthen its connectivity with Japan with two new submarine cables in the Pacific Ocean.
The growing importance of submarine cables has heightened concerns about their vulnerability to attack or accident.
After a series of cable breaks, experts said that undersea communications infrastructure is becoming an increasingly popular arena for geopolitical tension and conflict.
In January, NATO launched a mission to increase surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea after critical submarine cables were damaged last year.