This is how Facebook and Microsoft plan to move data across the ocean

May 30, 2016

This article is published in collaboration with Business Insider.

A NBN Co. worker holds a fibre-optic cable used in the National Broadband Network in west Sydney July 11, 2013. The future of an ambitious project to connect almost all Australia's far-flung inhabitants to high-speed internet, the largest infrastructure enterprise in the country's history, is hanging on the outcome of an upcoming federal election. The Labor government and conservative Liberal-led opposition have vastly differing plans for the A$37.4 billion ($34.2 billion) National Broadband Network (NBN), potentially hurting some business stakeholders and opening the door to others, including China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. Picture taken on July 11, 2013.

Facebook and Microsoft are teaming up transfer more data more quickly between the US and Europe. Image: REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

Jillian D'Onfro

Writer, Business Insider

Facebook and Microsoft are teaming up to build a new underwater cable that will span more than 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, according to a new announcement.

The cable will help both companies transfer more data more quickly between the US and Europe, connecting hubs in northern Virginia and Bilbao, Spain.

Image: Teleogeography

The move is meant to make Microsoft's and Facebook's services work more quickly and reliably for overseas users.

Telecommunications companies are usually the ones building massive undersea infrastructure like this, but as the data needs of tech giants grow they want to take greater control over the networks they rely on. For example, Google teamed up with five Asian telecom companies to fund a $300 million underwater cable network connecting the US and Japan in 2014.

Facebook has a slew of other initiatives to redesign telecommunications infrastructure, including tech to make radio towers more efficient and a wireless system tailored for dense urban areas.

The duo is calling its project MAREA, and construction will begin in August and end in October 2017.

Though the two tech giants are collaborating on the cable, it will be operated and managed by the telecommunications-infrastructure company Telxius.

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