Meta announces Project Waterworth, a 50,000 km subsea cable system
Meta has unveiled Project Waterworth, its most extensive subsea cable initiative to date. The system will span more than 50,000 km — longer than the Earth's circumference — and connect five continents, making it the world's longest subsea cable project built with the highest-capacity technology currently available.
The cable will link the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa, and other key regions, with the stated goal of supporting economic cooperation, digital inclusion, and technological development. In India, where digital infrastructure investment has already been significant, Waterworth is intended to accelerate progress and support the country's digital economy plans.
Scale and design
Subsea cables carry more than 95% of intercontinental traffic worldwide, forming the backbone of global digital infrastructure for communications, video, and online transactions. Project Waterworth represents a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year investment that will open three new oceanic corridors with high-speed connectivity aimed at supporting AI innovation.
Meta has worked with partners over the past decade on more than 20 subsea cable systems, including multiple deployments with 24 fiber pairs — well above the 8 to 16 fiber pairs typical of other new systems. Waterworth continues this engineering focus, becoming the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world while also aiming to speed up deployment timelines.
Resilience engineering
The project incorporates several design choices intended to maintain cable resilience. A first-of-its-kind routing approach maximizes the cable laid in deep water, at depths up to 7,000 meters, while enhanced burial techniques are used in high-risk fault areas such as shallow coastal waters to reduce the chance of damage from ship anchors and other hazards.
As AI reshapes industries and societies, capacity, resilience, and global reach are increasingly critical for supporting digital infrastructure. Waterworth is designed to help ensure that AI and related technologies remain accessible regardless of where people live or work.
