Construction of the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic is now complete.
The 6,600 km MAREA subsea cable, which was jointly funded by Microsoft and Facebook, links Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain. The cable will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company. The cable features eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps.
The cable takes a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.
“Marea comes at a critical time,” says Brad Smith, president of Microsoft. “Submarine cables in the Atlantic already carry 55 percent more data than trans-Pacific routes and 40 percent more data than between the U.S. and Latin America. There is no question that the demand for data flows across the Atlantic will continue to increase and Marea will provide a critical connection for the United States, Spain, and beyond.”
- TE SubCom served as the system supply partner for MAREA.
