Transatlantic Internet Cable Project
Microsoft and Facebook recently announced a plan to build a new undersea cable that will connect America to Southern Europe. The cable will link Virginia Beach to Bilbao (located in northern Spain) Microsoft and Facebook expect to start the ambitious project in August 2016, with completion estimated around October 2017.
The 6,600 km cable is expected to be the fastest undersea cable ever constructed, consisting of eight fiber pairs and a data capacity totaling 160Tbps (20TB/s). The cable’s route is deliberately different from conventional transatlantic cables, which typically terminate in New York or New Jersey. Microsoft claims that this routing decision will help ensure consistent and more reliable connections, presumably because it can serve as a backup if something goes wrong with the current ocean cables.
Cloud Driven Cable
The reason Microsoft and Facebook are joining forces for this project in the first place is to ensure a more robust infrastructure is in place to take advantage of their cloud computing project.
Better Line Speeds & Latency For African Countries?
In theory this mean that African countries could experience better and more reliable internet connections overall, this is great news (especially if you are a gamer like myself) as this means that latency to gaming servers overseas will be reduced considerably.