Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is the second-biggest driver of internet usage globally. Its properties — and their billions of users — account for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic. Meta's investments into artificial intelligence stand to boost that usage even further. So to make sure it will have reliable infrastructure to support that business, Meta is taking the pipes into its own hands.

According to sources close to the company, TechCrunch has confirmed that Meta plans to build a new, major, fibre-optic subsea cable that would extend around the world. This is a 40,000+ kilometer project that could total more than $10 billion of investment. What is critical, however, is that Meta will be the sole owner and user of this subsea cable — a first for the company and thus representing a milestone for its infrastructure efforts.

Sunil Tagare, a subsea cable expert (and pioneer in the space, as founder of Flag Telecom), who was the first to report Meta's plans back in October, told TechCrunch that the plan is to start with a budget of $2 billion but as the project builds out that figure is likely to go up to more than $10 billion as the project extends into years of work.

Sources close to Meta confirmed the project but said it is still in its early stages. Plans have been laid out, but physical assets have not, and they declined to discuss budget. The expectation is that Meta will talk more publicly about it in early 2025, when it will confirm plans for the cable, including intended route, capacity, and some of the reasoning behind building it.

It would be years before it is fully operational, were the strategy to be followed through, given that the limited number of companies, like SubCom, that are capable of building out the infrastructure already have large customers, like Google, reserving its services.

"There's a real tight supply on cable ships," said Ranulf Scarborough, a submarine cable industry analyst. "They're expensive at the minute and booked out several years ahead. Finding the available resources to do it soon is a challenge." One likely scenario could involve building in segments, he added.

Completed, the cable would provide Meta with a dedicated pipe for data traffic around the world. As outlined in sources, the cable currently stretches from the east coast of the U.S. to India via South Africa and then to the west coast of the U.S. via Australia, forming a "W" around the globe, as illustrated by Tagare:
Meta's infrastructure work is led by Santosh Janardhan, who is the company's head of global infrastructure and co-head of engineering. The company has teams around the world who look at and plan out its infrastructure — and it has had some big industry figures work for it in the past. In the case of this project, it is being developed out of the company's South Africa operation, according to sources.

Fiber-optic subsea cables have been a part of communications infrastructure for the last 40 years. What is different here is who is putting their money down to build and own it—and for what purposes.

Meta's plans reflect how investment and ownership of subsea networks has shifted in recent years from consortiums involving telecoms carriers, to now also including big tech giants.

Not exactly. Meta's a old player in the subsea game, with a history in having an interest in 16 networks already built, one of which was most recently added-the 2Africa that forms the cable around the whole of Africa, where carrier-operators include Orange, Vodafone, China Mobile and Bayobab/MTN to name but a few others.

The new venture however would be the very first that is wholly-owned by Meta itself.

That would put Meta into the same category as Google, which has involvement in some 33 different routes, including a few regional efforts in which it is the sole owner, per Telegeography's tracking. Other big tech companies that are either part owners or capacity buyers in subsea cables include Amazon and Microsoft (neither of which are whole-owners of any route themselves).

Why Meta wants its own cable
There are many reasons why big tech companies like Meta would be interested in building subsea cables. Firstly, with sole ownership of the route and cable, Meta will get first dibs in capacity to support traffic on its own properties.

Meta earns more in money outside North America than in its home market itself, according to earnings reports. Having priority on dedicated subsea cabling can help ensure quality of service on that traffic. (Note: this is just to ensure long-haul traffic: the company still has to negotiate with carriers within countries and in 'last-mile' delivery to users' devices, which can have its challenges.)

Meta, like Google, also touts the lift that has taken place in regions from its subsea investments, pointing out that initiatives such as Marea in Europe and those in Southeast Asia have added over "half a trillion dollars" to economies in those areas.

There is, however, a more pragmatic impetus for these investments: tech companies, not telecoms carriers, and certainly not traditional builders and owners of these cables, would like to have more direct ownership of the pipes needed to deliver content, advertising, and more to users around the world.

"They make their money from their products being presented to end users, and they will do everything they can to ensure customer experience, whether that's delivery of video or other assets," said Scarborough, the analyst. "Frankly, who's going to rely on traditional telcos anymore? Tech companies are now independent. They've realized they've got to build it themselves."

The second is geopolitical.

Subsea cables have been knocked down several times in recent years as collateral or direct damage from warfare. Houthi fighters, supported by Iran, are targeting boats and in doing so are damaging cables in the Red Sea (such as this one connecting Europe to India). This month, Russia was suspected of cutting a submarine cable in the Baltic Sea. This week, yet another cable went down, this time in European waters, but blame so far lies at the door of a Chinese ship.

The route as imagined by Meta is supposed to assist the company in the avoidance of areas of geopolitical tension, according to a company source speaking to TechCrunch.

Tagare points out in his blog post that the route would avoid the Red Sea, the South China Sea, Egypt, Marseilles, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore — "all of whom are now major single points of failure."

The FCC announced this month that it plans to review submarine cable licensing for the first time in decades, partly because of national security and ownership of the cables, could also potentially figure as another fillip here: Meta would be the sole owner of a route through safe corridors.

There's an arguably third reason for the Meta subsea vision, more speculative.

Going by one of Tagare's theories, it is directly related to the cable terminating in India. According to him, Meta has a chance at building out data center capacity in the country specifically for training and working with AI models, and the subsea cable could play a role in that effort.

He points out that India's cost for compute bandwidth is a fraction of the price in the U.S., and many in India have been buzzing after a recent visit by Jensen Huang: in a meeting with Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani, the Nvidia CEO talked about India building its own AI infrastructure. Reliance, among other vendors, will be using Nvidia's Blackwell chips in future AI data centers.

"India could become the training capital of the world," Tagare said in an interview. He thought that Meta might very much like to build AI training around that infrastructure in the country.

AI is a key element of Meta's infrastructure road map. But beyond that, India is a huge market for Meta, topping estimates as the country with the most users by far on Facebook-more than 375 million users, Instagram-363 million-and WhatsApp-536 million-and those consumers are proving to be very enthusiastic for newer features like its AI tools. With significant investments going into the data center market in the country, India still has much to grow, so this fact alone makes it logical to have added India as a landing point in the operation. Sources close to the project tell us that it's too early to say whether AI is part of the equation for Meta in this project, describing this as part of the "long tail" of considerations and possibilities, along with whether Meta would open up capacity to other users alongside itself.