Big Tech’s most important infrastructure is at the bottom of the sea
While data centers on land are getting all the attention, Big Tech’s vast network of undersea fiber-optic cables carry 99% of all international network traffic.
This week, Amazon announced plans for “Fastnet,” a new undersea transatlantic fiber-optic cable running from Maryland to County Cork, Ireland. The new, high-capacity cable will carry Amazon Web Services data at a rate of over 320 terabits per second — which Amazon says is enough to transmit “the entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second” or stream “12.5 million HD films simultaneously.”
Amazon’s latest cable joins a crowded sea of submarine pathways linking Big Tech’s data centers and customers around the world.
While massive data centers on land are the focus of the industry right now, and space-based internet is scaling up, undersea fiber is still the most crucial part of tech companies’ infrastructure for global computing today, as they handle 99% of all international network traffic.
Let’s take a look at the size and reach of tech’s biggest companies.
Amazon
While AWS offers 120 Availability Zones in 38 geographic regions, it actually has the fewest number of miles of fiber-optic undersea cable of its Big Tech peers, according to data from TeleGeography.
Including Fastnet’s approximately 5,500 kilometers of cable, Amazon has invested in projects covering about 30,000 kilometers of fiber, most of which are still in development. But the company says if you count up terrestrial and subsea fiber, its network uses over 9 million kilometers.
It also uses the JUPITER consortium’s 14,500-kilometer transpacific cable, along with Meta, which entered service in 2020.
Microsoft
Microsoft shares the 6,600-kilometer MAREA transatlantic cable with Meta and Spanish telecom company Telxius, which entered service in 2018. MAREA was hailed as the first “Open Cable System” in the world — allowing the connection at landing stations to be used with any company’s networking equipment, rather than one system for the entire cable from one vendor. It also allows for updates that improve the speed of the connection without having to lay new cable.
Highlighting the unique risks that come with a fire hose of data just lying on the seabed, in September, Microsoft’s Azure cloud service was disrupted in Asia and Europe when some of its undersea cables were cut in the Red Sea.
Meta
Not content to have only the world’s largest data center, Meta also wants to have the longest undersea cable. Announced in February, Project Waterworth consists of 50,000 kilometers of cable that will span five continents. Meta says that the Waterworth cables will use a “first-of-its-kind” routing allowing for deep-water placement — up to 7,000 meters — and “enhanced burial techniques” in shallow waters to prevent damage from ships and anchors.
Meta was also a key partner in the massive 45,000-kilometer 2Africa Pearls cable project, which wraps around Africa, connecting it to Europe and Asia.
Google leads the pack in Big Tech for the most extensive undersea fiber network. It has access to about 267,000 kilometers of cable in the 33 projects it has invested in.
Google’s early work to build a global web search network brought the company to seek undersea fiber capacity early. Google has been investing in undersea cable consortiums since the 2010s, and in 2018 it started to build its own private cable projects:
“Dunant” - A 6,600-kilometer cable from Virginia to France.
“Curie” - A 10,500-kilometer cable that runs from Los Angeles, California, to Panama City, Panama, to Valparaiso, Chile.
“Grace Hopper” - A 7,000-kilometer cable that connects New York to the United Kingdom and Spain.
“Equiano” - A 15,000-kilometer cable that runs from Portugal along the western coast of Africa to end in South Africa.
Dig deeper into Big Tech’s spiderweb of undersea fiber in the searchable table below, or visit TeleGeography’s comprehensive Submarine Cable Map.
