Meta is planning to build the world’s longest subsea data cable, which will link the US with India, South Africa, Brazil and other regions along the way.

Dubbed Project Waterworth, the project will link five major continents together and span over 50,000km in total, making it the world’s longest subsea cable project.

Subsea cable projects such as this are the backbone of global digital infrastructure, accounting for more than 95% of intercontinental traffic across the world’s oceans.

Meta already has involvement in other subsea cables, including the Echo, Bifrost, Havhingsten, Amite and Anjana cables. Meanwhile, the 2Africa cable, which circumnavigates the coastline of Africa to interconnect Europe and the Middle East, is now partly operational.

Other tech giants such as Google have also invested heavily in physical infrastructure to ensure their services have the data bandwidth available. In 2020, the firm announced a cable connecting the US, the UK and Spain.

While involvement in these...