Facebook to build 150,000 km of subsea cable around Africa to improve bandwidth

The US-based social media giant Facebook works on the first 24-fibre-pair subsea cable system to connect the United States and Europe. Data transfer rates within the subsea cables will be as high as half a million gigabits per second. Although there is no information about when the cable will be functional, Facebook has also announced the Terragraph technology, which will create a mmWave mesh and provide a solution to last-mile connectivity. In addition to the subsea cable connecting the United States with Europe, Facebook is also working on another undersea cable that will connect Africa with Asia and Europe. The African project cable will be docked in 46 cities which would be in 33 countries. During a press briefing, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer said that "We have designed floating power stations that sit in the middle of the ocean, harnessing the power of the sun and the waves, delivering it to the cables in the ocean floor, allowing us to boost their capacity." 

In a public statement, Vice President of Facebook Connectivity Dan Rabinovitsj says that the company is building the 2Africa Pearls subsea cable, over 150,000 km. Alongside, the company is also working on new technologies that will improve the performance of these cables. The massive data cable line on the outskirts of the African continent will help increase the bandwidth that reaches there. Facebook has also released a predictive route of where the subsea data cables will be placed to avoid the dangers of fishing and undersea volcanoes. 

The undersea cables require a constant supply of electricity to boost the data speeds. However, since the primary electricity supplies of these offshore stations are provided from the land, there is a limit to it. Program Manager, Submarine Cables at Facebook, Cynthia Perret, explained in a public statement that Facebook is also exploring an opportunity to generate power by using a combination of solar panels and wave energy converters. Facebook is also trying to solve the last-mile connectivity issue with its Terragraph technology, which is already in use in Alaska and Perth. The technology works by installing a transmitter box mounted onto the poles that carry a street sign and delivers decent performance wirelessly. 

Image: PTI