Let’s say you’re looking for something fun to do with your family this weekend and you ask Meta AI to suggest something. Based on the home location you’ve listed as part of your Facebook profile, recent views of reels featuring live performances by various country artists and its memory that you have a partner and two young kids, new functionality in Meta AI might suggest tickets for a country music show at your local arena and reservations at a local brunch spot.
Meta is rolling out a more personalized assistant capable of doing this, and it is also about to roll out a 50,000 kilometer, five continent subsea telecommunications cable system that will “ensure that the benefits of AI and other emerging technologies are available to everyone, regardless of where they live or work.”
As Geoff Bennett, Director, Solutions and Technology at Infinera, has explained, subsea cables are an important component of global AI infrastructure, especially for the increased long-distance traffic that comes from applications needing constant server-to-server communication.
“For example, your Facebook page may look like a single pane of information, but it’s actually a collage of multiple information streams that come from different parts of the virtualized cloud of storage… As a U.K. resident, I spend most of my money here, so if I travel to the U.S. or around Asia, there’s no point in serving me U.S. or Asia ads – the Facebook data center in Singapore, for example, has to synchronize with one of their three data centers in Europe to retrieve the appropriate advertising and deliver it with low latency so I don’t scroll past it before it’s delivered, because then Facebook would not get paid for my ‘eyeballs.’”
The new Meta cable system, the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world, will deploy first-of-its-kind routing and maximize the amount of cable laid in deep water – at depths of up to 7,000 meters. Enhanced burial techniques will be used in high-risk fault areas such as shallow waters near the coast, to avoid damage from ship anchors and other hazards.
In the Jan/Feb issue of Marine Technology Reporter, Alisa Reiner explains why risk mitigation is so important: “Subsea infrastructure is increasingly threatened by activities that fall within the realm of plausibly deniable, sub-threshold operations.”
She notes that the South China Sea and the Red Sea have been identified as chokepoints for undersea cables. In March 2024, several major cables in the Red Sea were cut, impacting 25% of data traffic between Asia and Europe.
“These threats are not just isolated incidents but may form part of broader strategic maneuvers. At the onset of potential hostilities, cable disruptions can serve as tactical enablers, preparing the battlespace for larger military operations.”
Meta’s new cable system will avoid both the Red Sea and the South China Sea. It aims to facilitate cooperation rather than disrupt it, and it will run between countries such as the U.S., India, Brazil and South Africa. “This project will enable greater economic cooperation, facilitate digital inclusion and open opportunities for technological development in these regions.”
This week, Meta also introduced a new message translation feature within Instagram’s direct messaging, “helping you communicate with family and friends across the world.”