Deep sea cables: 4,000-mile USA to Spain internet cable completed by Microsoft, Facebook - TomoNews

BILBAO, SPAIN / VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA — Microsoft, Facebook and Spanish telecommunications giant Telxius have just completed work on a massive continent-to-continent underwater cable. According to a Microsoft news release, the Marea undersea cable is comprised of eight pairs of fiber optic cables, encircled by copper, a layer of hard-plastic and a waterproof coating. The subsea cable stretches over 4,000 miles from the U.S. east coast at Virginia Beach, to Spain’s north coast at Bilbao. When laying the cable, engineers had to account for an average depth of 11,000 feet and hazards including coral reefs, earthquake zones and active volcanoes.The cable can transmit a maximum of 160 terabits per second. That’s the equivalent of 71 million streaming high definition videos.