By Liam Tung, ZDNet
September 22, 2017
Microsoft, Facebook and Telefonica have hit a key milestone in delivering their new trans-Atlantic subsea cable with a data capacity of 160 terabits per second.
Telefonica subsidiary Telxius has finished laying the Microsoft- and Facebook-backed Marea subsea cable, which stretches 4,000 miles (6,600km) across the Atlantic ocean from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Bilbao in northern Spain.
Microsoft boasts that its 160-terabit/s cable is 16 million times faster than your home broadband and could stream 71 million HD videos simultaneously. The cable contains eight pairs of fiber-optic threads wrapped in copper.
Telxius, which will operate the cable once it goes live, began construction in August 2016.
