Facebook, Microsoft Team Up to Build Trans-Atlantic Undersea Cable

To carter for the growing demand for high-speed online and cloud services, Microsoft  and Facebook  have joined forces to build an undersea cable across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting the US to Europe.

The companies said in a statement that the new project dubbed "MAREA", is designed to have an estimated initial capacity of 160 terabits of data per second, the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic. The cable will stretch 4,100 miles (6,600 kilometres) from the US' Virginia to Bilbao, Spain.

The MAREA cable has a new open design that will allow it to be interoperable with a variety of networking equipment, resulting in lower costs and easier equipment upgrades for customers.

Construction of the cable, which will be managed by Telxius, a division of the Telefonica , will start in August 2016 and is expected to be ready in October 2017.

This plan comes about two years after Google partnered with five other companies to build a trans-Pacific cable system to connect the West Coast of the US with cities in Japan.