Marea (Internet cable)

2017: Completion of works

In September, 2017 it became known of laying of a new Internet cable under water between Europe and the USA. Contractors of the project under the name Marea ("inflow" in Spanish) — Facebook, Microsoft and Telxius telecommunication company  — say record capacity.

Connection Marea cable Spain and USA

The cable about 6.6 thousand kilometers long is laid on a bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, connecting the coast of the American State of Virginia and the city of Bilbao on the bank of Spain. Data on a wire can be transferred with a speed of 160 terabits per second thanks to what, for example, it is possible to broadcast at the same time 71 million videos with Full HD resolution. Transmission rate in 16 million times is higher in comparison with the average home Internet, declare in Microsoft.

End of the Marea cable

Total weight of a cable exceeds 4500 tons and corresponds to the mass of 34 blue whales. Average depth of laying is about 3.35 km. At the same time diameter of a cable is only 1.5 times more, than at a normal garden hose. The cable contains 8 fibers concluded in a cover from copper, plastic and waterproof layers. Closer to coast it was placed in the special protection cover, but on the most part of a route the cable lies at an ocean floor.

The twisted Marea cable

The Marea project  is announced in May, 2016, in August the first works began. Thus, the cable was laid a little more than in a year that three times quicker than terms of implementation of other similar projects. Europe and the USA are connected by a set of wires under water.

Huge data arrays will be transmitted through the new submarine cable from one part of the world in another. So, Microsoft will be able to provide uninterrupted works of the search system Bing, service Office 365 and cloud infrastructure Azure, and Facebook will be able to accelerate data transmission from the USA to Europe thanks to what services Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram will begin to work quicker.^[1]

Most of people does not think of why videos on Youtube are available to them or how they correspond with friends from Australia. Meanwhile, an overwhelming part of Internet traffic passes on the cables crossing a bottom of oceans and connecting among themselves continents as this network. Failure of a part of this "network" can be critical for communication between the countries. For example, in 2012 the hurricane Sandie damaged the majority of the cables which are in New York and New Jersey which are the main exit points of cables on the coast. As a result Internet connection between North America and Europe was absent within several hours. For the sake of the increased fault tolerance and more reliable Marea connection it was placed considerably to the south of other transatlantic cables.

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