With a billion users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, India is already Meta’s largest market in terms of users surpassing the US. And imagine if all these users started using AI in some form or the other. That requires massive investments in data centers in India and submarine cables for connectivity.
But the world of submarine cables has major political problems — in the Red Sea and in the South China Sea which Meta believes are long-term intractable problems, in spite of Meta’s large investments in 2Africa. So Meta — after a hiatus of almost 3 years in the subsea space — is planning one hell of a cable that will shock the world.
Dubbed “W” — for it’s shape, the 40,000 Km cable costing $2 Billion, will be dedicated principally to India. It will start on the East Coast of the US and go straight to India with a stop in South Africa (for powering and restoration purposes). And it will also go from India straight to the Western Coast of the US with a powering and restoration stop in Darwin, Australia — avoiding the Red Sea, the South China Sea and more importantly Egypt, Marseilles, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore — all of whom are now major single points of failure.
While this is brilliant, what W has to compromise on is latency. But I guess it is more important to have long-term security and peace of mind than worry about despotic countries and their never-ending issues and having to make ransom payments on a regular basis as in Egypt and Yemen.
So how much money are we talking about? In round figures, I believe this is going to be about a $10 Billion++ investment over the next 5-10 years. Let me break it down. $2 Billion for the bare bones cable, $2 Billion for the equipment to light up 1 Pbps capacity — two sides (East and West) with 500 Tbps capacity each (24 fiber pairs at around 20-25 Tbps each) and this is my assumption — at least $6 Billion++ in leasing or building AI Data Center capacity in India.
The W cable will land in Jio facilities and the first AI data center will be in Chennai at the MAA10 data center campus which is part of Digital Connexion — a JV between Reliance Industries, Brookfield Asset Management and Digital Realty. This is a starter campus with 10 acres of land and 100 MW capacity.
As with all submarine cable projects, the RFS of this cable will be at least 4 years after CIF. So I assume the first equipment to be lit in the 2029-2030 timeframe. Ironically, the cable will waste 1-2 years trying to beg and bribe Indian officials to approve the cable and to get marine survey and installation permits from the Government of India — the same country which is going to benefit the most from this cable. The most mind-bending activity is one has to import the cableship that lays cable in India because the Government is afraid you may not take back your own ship — costing about $80 million or so! Let me not get started with the atrocious 19th century Indian submarine cable regulations (worst in the world including Africa) otherwise I will keep on writing about them and will never stop. Welcome to India!
My biggest problem with this project is Meta will own 100% of the capacity of this cable — steering away from the fantastic consortium approach it used in 2Africa and now mirroring the Google approach of showing off brute strength. I hope sense prevails within Meta to mirror the 2Africa approach which has been highly successful.
If Meta refuses to bring in partners, Google will be forced to copy Meta with its own dedicated solution for India. In any case, we can look forward to India’s next few decades of glory as the AI capital of the world — in spite of the Indian Government.
