Tech giants Microsoft and Facebook have taken a significant step towards building highest capacity data link between US and Europe. The companies will help design subsea cable which will connect one point contact in the US — Virginia to another single point contact in Spain – Bilbao. Execution partner for this project will be Spanish Telecommunications company — Telefonica. Apart from connecting two countries to transfer data economically and swiftly without having to depend on telecommunications firms for this purpose, Telefonica will set this exclusive facility up for two companies to use their global data centres and will rent out the any remaining bandwidth for other companies to use. The move will not only help two giants move data swiftly between two nations, but also make it a lot more cost efficient while reducing the expenses involved in earlier mode of data transportation where the companies paid a hefty rent to telecommunications companies. Not only that, the speed of data transfer would also be affected since the lines were being shared by many others.
The project, named MAREA is pitted to be the highest-capacity sub-sea cable across the Atlantic while possessing a capacity of 160 terabites/second data transfer. The entire project is significant in terms of sheer capacity and partnership with the sole purpose being data transfer. However, this cannot be named the ‘first ever’ data cable laying project in the world because Google had already initiated a similar process in 2014 with five telecom companies to build subsea cable across Pacific Ocean.
MAREA – the project involves laying of cables up to 6,600 km. The work is scheduled to start in August 2016 and be completed little over a year later, by October 2017. Microsoft is very enthused about the enhancement of the potential MAREA would create for its cloud computing services, along with increasing its reliability as well.
Microsoft has been testing the feasibility of underwater data centers since they are easy to maintain and cost marginal budget when compared to on ground data centers. The logic behind opting for underwater data centers is that they would not need cooling facilities which are essential to maintain the efficiency of onground data centers now. These centers will harness marine energy for their purpose. Facebook has long hinted that it would play a significant role in improving global internet access since the company is committed to making FB a better experience with time, for its 1.23 bn users.
