Microsoft and Facebook have partnered together to build the largest subsea trans-Atlantic cable with a speed of up to 160Tbps. Named MAREA, it is expected to be the largest capacity cable ever created, with the potential to boost both Microsoft and Facebook’s cloud business.

The cable clocks in at a massive 6,600 km and will connect the United States with Southern Europe from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain. Telefonica subsidiary Telxius will oversee the cable’s management.

Customers today require higher speed transfers when connected to a cloud server and this initiative is designed to deliver that:

“In order to better serve our customers and provide the type of reliable and low-latency connectivity they deserve, we are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to continuously upgrade both the Microsoft Cloud and the global Internet infrastructure,” said Frank Rey, director, global network acquisition, Microsoft Corp. “This marks an important new step in building the next generation infrastructure of the Internet.”

Construction of the cable will begin in August of this year, but it won’t be completed until October 2017.

What Microsoft is doing here is clear proof of the company’s aim to stay relevant in the cloud arena for a long time to come. It is also proof of how important the cloud market is, especially now since it is a billion-dollar business annually. We hope to learn more of the building of MAREA until the final piece of work late next year.

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