We are excited to share that we have taken capacity across the Meta & Microsoft MAREA cable that connects the United States with Spain. Our capacity on this transatlantic cable provides customers with a more efficient path to Africa and Mid Asia and alternative routes from the US to Europe that are faster and shorter than paths commonly used. Owned by Meta and Microsoft, the high capacity cable offers faster speeds chiefly because of the geographical positioning of the cable across the sea.
The birth of the MAREA cable arrived from a growing requirement to transfer more data across the Atlantic, faster, and safe from natural disasters following the devastating effects Hurricane Sandy had on transatlantic connectivity in 2012. Positioning the cable many miles south of the existing connection points on both continents safeguards against disasters and other prominent events disrupting connectivity across the Atlantic. The shorter physical distance also improves the latency and efficiency of data transfer.
Source: Meta/Microsoft
MAREA - Spanish for ‘tide’ - stretches from Virginia to Bilbao (Spain) and shuttles data across 6,600 km of the seabed. It is the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic, providing up to 160 terabits of data per second - roughly 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Such capacity facilitates the capability to stream 71 million high-definition videos simultaneously. Further, Marea’s landing point in Bilbao provides a convenient path to network hubs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and its enormous bandwidth helps meet the ever-growing demand for internet and cloud services.
From design through to construction, MAREA was achieved in less than two years — nearly three times faster than a typical subsea cable assignment. It marks a noteworthy shift away from cables standing exclusively by telecommunication companies and toward tech titans and internet giants installing their own infrastructure to fulfil their connectivity demands instead of leasing bandwidth.
(The MAREA cable coiled onboard a ship. Source: Microsoft)
Microsoft and Meta are not the only tech giants moving into network infrastructure in order to facilitate their immense data transfer needs. Google also possesses numerous undersea cables stretching from the USA to Japan, the USA to Brazil and a network of cables connecting various parts of Asia.
In the case of MAREA, it is important to note that Telxius, the Spanish telecommunications operator, does operate the cable and commands the majority of its bandwidth.
Get in touch with the team if you are interested in learning more about how our new capacity across MAREA can benefit your network requirements.
