Back in November, we broke the news that Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with billions of users accounting for 10% of all fixed and 22% of all mobile traffic — was close to announcing work on a major new, $10 billion+ subsea cable project to connect up the globe. The aim was to give Meta more control over how it runs its own services.
Today, Meta confirmed details of our report: Project Waterworth is the official name, and it will be 50,000 kilometers long when completed, making it the world’s longest subsea cable project.
Lining up with what we had heard about the project months ago, the network will connect up five continents with landing points in the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa, and other key regions. Facebook particularly calls out the opportunities in India, and the role that the network will play in how it rolls out AI services globally, as two key reasons for building the network.
In terms of the network itself, Meta says it will be breaking new ground with its architecture, using 24 fiber pair cables, and what it describes as first-of-its-kind routing, “maximizing the cable laid in deep water — at depths up to 7,000 meters” along with new burial techniques to reduce faults in areas deemed “high risk,” either because of geographical issues, or politics — and sometimes both.
Previously, we noted that one of the major factors in the market influencing Meta to build its own subsea infrastructure was geopolitics. That has indeed played a role here.
On Thursday, the White House published a joint leaders statement from U.S. President Trump and India’s prime minister Shri Narendra Modi, which detailed a lengthy list of areas where the two countries would cooperate. Tucked into that long document was a commitment to co-developing undersea technologies (as part of a defense partnership) as well as a note of Meta’s 50,000km Waterworth project, and India’s role in financing some of it.
“Supporting greater Indian Ocean connectivity, the leaders also welcomed Meta’s announcement of a multi-billion, multi-year investment in an undersea cable project that will begin work this year,” the statement noted. “India intends to invest in maintenance, repair and financing of undersea cables in the Indian Ocean, using trusted vendors.”
As for what the cable will be used for: In November, one of our sources postulated that the growth of AI data centers and cloud services in India, the world’s most populous country, was a significant reason for Meta’s project in the first place.
Meta has declined to comment to us on more specific details but provided some high-level ideas of applications and highlighted the country and AI in its blog post.
“Digital communication, video experiences and online transactions,” are among the applications that the subsea cable will enable, according to a blog post penned by Meta’s VP of engineering Gaya Nagarajan and its global head of network investments Alex-Handrah Aimé. “Project Waterworth will be a multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment to strengthen the scale and reliability of the world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the abundant, high speed connectivity needed to drive AI innovation around the world.”
This is not Meta’s first subsea cable effort, nor is it the only major technology company to build its own subsea infrastructure.
According to telecom analysts Telegeography, Meta is part owner of 16 existing networks, including the 2Africa cable that encircles the continent (others in that project are carriers, including Orange, Vodafone, China Mobile, Bayobab/MTN, and more). This new cable project would be the first 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).
