MAREA is completed across the Atlantic
Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius announced completion of a cable of about 6,600 km between Virginia Beach and Sopelana near Bilbao, with eight fibre pairs and an initial design capacity given as 160 Tbps. Two features mark the change of era: the owners are the companies whose services generate the traffic rather than carriers selling capacity, and the southern landfall deliberately avoids the crowded northern transatlantic corridor.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- MAREA · infrastructure · North Atlantic · not located
- The shift of cable ownership to content providers · phenomenon · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Completion of the MAREA transatlantic cable
Supports MAREA's landings at Virginia Beach and Sopelana near Bilbao, its length of about 6,600 km, its eight fibre pairs, its initial design capacity of 160 Tbps and the three-party ownership. V55 verification basis: retrieved in summary, not opened. This is a source announcing its own project; the 200 Tbps figure quoted elsewhere in trade coverage is a vendor trial result and is treated in this pack as demonstrated rather than contracted capacity.
Microsoft, with Telxius · 2017-09 · Partly verified
Microsoft corporate blog announcement of the completion of MAREA, September 2017, and the corresponding Telxius announcement
Recorded on MAREA
- MAREA is completed across the Atlantic
- The core of 2Africa is completed
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The core of 2Africa is completed · 2025-11-17