Meta's Project Waterworth: The Next Evolution in Subsea Connectivity

Meta has unveiled its most ambitious subsea cable project to date — Project Waterworth, previously referred to as "W", because of it's shape. The multi-billion-dollar initiative is set to become the longest subsea cable in the world, spanning over 50,000 km and connecting five major continents, including the U.S., India, Brazil, and South Africa. With 24 fibre pairs delivering the highest capacity technology available, Project Waterworth will redefine global digital infrastructure and enhance connectivity for billions of users.

Subsea cables form the backbone of the internet, carrying more than 95% of intercontinental traffic and enabling global communication, financial transactions, and AI-driven innovations. With this latest venture, Meta aims to open three new oceanic corridors, ensuring high-speed, reliable connectivity that will power the next wave of AI advancements worldwide. By leveraging cutting-edge routing techniques, enhanced burial methods in high-risk areas, and deep-sea deployments up to 7,000 metres, Project Waterworth is designed for maximum resilience and security.

India at the Centre of Meta’s Connectivity Vision

India is central to Meta’s strategy, with its platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—serving over a billion users in the country. With AI adoption accelerating, demand for data centre capacity and seamless connectivity is at an all-time high. Project Waterworth is expected to play a pivotal role in supporting India’s digital economy by providing the necessary infrastructure to handle AI workloads, cloud services, and high-speed internet demands.

The project also underscores Meta’s shift in subsea cable strategy. Unlike its earlier 2Africa initiative, which followed a consortium approach, Project Waterworth appears to be a fully owned and controlled system. This mirrors Google's model of securing dedicated infrastructure for strategic markets rather than relying on shared capacity. While this approach ensures end-to-end control and security, it diverges from the collaborative model that has been highly successful in previous large-scale subsea cable projects.

Bypassing Global Chokepoints

One of the key aspects of Project Waterworth is its avoidance of politically sensitive and high-risk regions. Meta has reportedly designed the cable to steer clear of the Red Sea, the South China Sea, Egypt, and the Malacca Strait—areas that have become significant geopolitical bottlenecks for global internet traffic. By taking a direct route between the U.S. and India with strategic stops in South Africa and potentially Australia, Project Waterworth aims to ensure long-term security and avoid the risks associated with conflict zones and regulatory challenges in transit countries.

However, this bypassing of traditional routes does come with a trade-off: increased latency. Despite this, Meta appears to prioritise long-term security and reliability over marginal improvements in data transmission speeds. The project will also likely face regulatory hurdles, particularly in India, where obtaining permits for marine surveys and installations is notoriously complex and time-consuming.

The Battle for AI Connectivity Dominance

Meta’s decision to fully own Project Waterworth could have wider implications for the subsea cable industry. If Meta excludes partners, it may push competitors like Google to develop their own dedicated infrastructure to serve India’s growing digital ecosystem. Given the scale of investment—potentially exceeding $10 billion over the next decade—this move signals a new era of tech giants building independent, AI-optimised connectivity solutions.

While Project Waterworth marks a significant leap forward in global connectivity, the challenge will be balancing rapid deployment with regulatory constraints. If successful, it will not only strengthen Meta’s position as a digital infrastructure leader but also cement India’s role as a global AI powerhouse in the decades to come.

Related Posts:

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog - Data Centers At Meta: Heterogeneous Integration Driven By AI/ML And Network Applications
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: The Role of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) in Making Sure Internet Works
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Facebook's Fiber Deploying Robot
• The 3G4G Blog: AI and Analytics Based Network Designing & Planning 

Details on India's First Neutral Shared RAN Solution

Back in August, RailTel and CloudExtel partnered to launch India's first Shared RAN solution for congested locations with the objective to enhance the telecom user experience. A press release said:

RailTel and CloudExtel carried out the successful pilot of this project in partnership with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Nokia, and the Telecom Infra Project's NaaS Solutions Group, with vital support from the Railways, in one of the most network stressed locations, Mumbai Central railway station. The outcomes have been impressive with 5 times increase in average user speed (from 3Mbps to 15Mbps) for both Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, while the data consumption jumped up by 20%.

At Telecom Infra Project's Fyuz 2022 conference, Kunal Bajaj, CEO & Co-Founder, CloudExtel provided details on this in a breakout session dedicated to Neutral Host Network-as-a-service (NaaS) business model. His part of talk is embedded below and you can also check out his presentation from the main stage here. 

In an interview with Economic Times earlier this year, Kunal pointed out:

How many small cell sites are there in the country at present?

Small cells are not just for 5G rollout. There is a substantial 4G component of it today. As per industry standards, there are over about 30,000 odd small cell sites that have already been rolled out. Of that, about one-third to one-half of those sites have been rolled out by Reliance Jio. The balance have been rolled out by Airtel and Vodafone, and of that we have the largest market share. We have done over 4,000 sites for these two telcos, and there are all primarily 4G sites.

What’s the demand like for 4G small cells?

Even in the 4G space, month on month, year on year, data consumption has continued to grow pretty substantially. We are at 19 gigs per user, per month today, and if I remember correctly, we were at 12 gigs just a year ago, and much lower than that before. And this is all coming from 4G. 5G is not there yet, and what that really demonstrates is the reliance that users have on wireless connectivity. We have don’t much fixed line infrastructure today in India to really speak of. 25 million fixed line broadband users is nothing compared to the over 500 million 4G subscriptions. This growth in 4G data densification, even with 5G auctions coming up, will continue for the next two years.

Going forward, will these 4G sites be converted to 5G, or that will be part of a separate infrastructure?

If you see what has happened historically, when we went from 2G to 3G, and more relevantly, when we went to 3G to 4G, the 4G sites came up wherever you have very high capacity usage on 3G. 3G was not taken away, but those sites were upgraded to dual technology, by upgrading the equipment and adding an additional 4G radio to bring up 4G traffic from those sites. And I think that’s exactly what we are going to see in the 5G environment. The good thing is a lot of telecom operators learned from the 3G to 4G transition, and started investing very early in hardware that would be upgradeable to 5G.

Obviously the radio band is different, and there’s nothing really you can do in software to make the same radio to radiate multiple bands. So there will be investment. That happens in radio ugprades, but the core base station technology, the back haul, switches and things like that, a lot of that is now software upgradeable, and therefore it is going to be hopefully a much easier transition from 4G to 5G.

So what’s your projection of the number of small cells that will come up with the 5G rollout from August?

Some of the industry projections that we see from a lot of analysts and consulting companies is that India needs somewhere around 2,50000 small cell sites in the next five years across all three of the major operators. What that basically means is over 5-6 lakh unique small cells to be deployed. So that’s a tremendous amount of growth that we are going to see. The first one or two years from now is primarily going to be 4G, but then after that, the huge acceleration, the hockey stick curve is going to come from 5G deployment.

What is the kind of investments you are looking at in the next five years to cater to this demand?

We are talking of hundred of crores, just for us. We are looking at our base growing from 4000 small cells to 40000 small cell sites in the next five years. That’s a conservative projection, obviously, we believe and hope that we can do a lot more than that, but that will require well over 400-500 crores for us to really pull that off, and that’s where the opportunity to scale and build a substantial network. Today, when you compare us to the mainline tower companies, we are still a startup and in the beginning of our first innings, so we have a long way to go.

There certainly is a bright future for Neutral Host Network-as-a-service (NaaS), especially in country like India, with a large population of young people.

Related Posts: 

• Connectivity Technology Blog: Shared Neutral Host RAN Solution in India to Unlock 5x QoE Improvement
• The 3G4G Blog: Quick tutorial on Mobile Network Sharing Options
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Passive and Active Infrastructure Sharing
• The 3G4G Blog: How MOCN RAN-Sharing Works
• The 3G4G Blog: Mobile Network Infrastructure Sharing in Japan over Electric Power Infrastructure
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Rakuten Mobile and TEPCO Power Grid establish 'Rakuten Mobile Infra Solution'
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: London Underground Mobile Network Infrastructure
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Crown Castle bringing more Small Cells to the USA
• The 3G4G Blog: The Journey from Communications Service Provider (CSP) to Digital Service Provider (DSP) 

Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) as an Alternative to Fiber Deployments

Project Taara, a part of Alphabet's X moonshot factory, has been working on a wireless optical technology that could deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity to remote areas using a network of light emitters and receivers.

The Taara team has piloted their technology in India and Africa. Taara links offer a cost-effective and quickly deployable way to bring high-speed connectivity to remote areas. Taara links help plug critical gaps to major access points, like cell towers and WiFi hotspots, and have the potential to help thousands of people access the educational, business, and communication benefits of the web.

A potential solution to this problem arose during work on Project Loon. The Loon team needed to figure out a way to create a data link between balloons that were flying over 100 km apart. The team investigated the use of wireless optical communication technology to establish high-throughput links between balloons. Like fiber, but without the cables, wireless optical communication uses light to transmit high-speed data between two points.

Free Space Optical Communications, aka FSOC links use beams of light to deliver high-speed, high-capacity connectivity over long distances — just like fiber optic cable, but without the cable. And because there’s no cable, this means there’s none of the time, cost, and hassle involved in digging trenches or stringing cable along poles. FSOC boxes can simply be placed kilometers apart on roofs or towers, with the signal beamed directly between the boxes to easily traverse common obstacles like rivers, roads and railways.

The advantage of these High-throughput links are:

• Flexible Technology: With a clear line of sight, wireless optical communication technology can transmit data at high speeds of up to 20 Gbps. A single link can cover distances up to 20 km and be used to extend fiber networks.
• Long-Range: Long range line-of-sight data transmissions at 20+ km.
• High-Speed: High-throughput supports 10-100s Gbps data rates.
• Connectivity Across Terrains: The system is effective in areas that are difficult to connect using fiber cables. These include sites located around forests, water bodies, railway tracks, or land with high real estate costs.
• Easy To Integrate: Based on open standards to work seamlessly with existing infrastructure and environments.

Looking forward to hearing more about how it's helping connect the unconnected.

Related Posts:

• Connectivity Technology Blog: An Introduction to Different Types of Backhaul
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: TIP Webinar on Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT)
• Connectivity Technology Blog: Tarana's Air Fibre 

BSNL bringing 'Smart Telecom Poles' to India with help of Nokia

BSNL is committed towards driving the connectivity agenda. This is why its selected Nokia for smart pole deployment across India.

According to Nokia press release:

Nokia has been selected by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to support the transformation of India's cities through intelligent infrastructure. Nokia will supply, install, commission and maintain the Smart Telecom Poles across India in all of BSNL's telecom circles. Under the contract, Nokia will also integrate the poles with smart LED lighting systems, CCTV cameras, digital billboards and environmental sensors that provide strong revenue generation potential for the operator. The smart pole has been designed for emerging markets and built in India based on Nokia's global services expertise.

The Indian urban landscape is evolving, with government and city administrations gearing up to ensure the safety and security of citizens and provide them a better quality of life. BSNL, in line with the Indian government's Smart Cities Mission, is exploring and taking the lead to digitalize cities.

With its Smart Telecom Pole and services expertise, Nokia will help BSNL provide access to mobile connectivity and smart solutions for citizens while ensuring the poles meet the aesthetic and spatial needs in modern cities. Nokia will optimize the telecom infrastructure to provide a shared, secure and scalable platform that ensures the best use of urban resources and prepares BSNL for the needs of new technologies such as IoT and 5G.

The pole can be adapted to diverse geographical environments and climate conditions. It also houses a custom-designed power backup solution to provide continuity of services during power outages.

Back in June, BSNL issued a tender for supply, implementation and maintenance of smart pole with smart light, environmental sensor, advertisement panel, and surveillance camera for smart city. There is no direct link but can easily be found via search. Here were some of the requirements they were looking for.

Finally, I noticed the following picture being used by some websites (example) along with the announcement.

I am not sure if this is Nokia pole. This looks like the 'Multi Utility Pole' from Vizag (Visakhapatnam) smart city project.

Smart Poles to be installed at 50 locations in Vizag City under Vizag Smart City Project. #VisakhapatnamSmartCity #Vizag @GVMC_OFFICIAL @jm_hari #SmartPoles pic.twitter.com/fOABZ2N3eT

— Visakhapatnam Smart City (@vizag_smartcity) January 8, 2018

Will share more info when available.


Related posts:

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: ZTE's 4G / 5G Street Lights
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Ericsson's Invisible Sites: Urban Case Studies
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Small Cells in the Lamp posts
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: KDDI to test 5G with base stations built in Street Lights

Top 5 posts for 2017

Here are the top 5 posts (in descending order of popularity) for 2017:

1. Flying Small Cells are here...
2. Telefonica's LTE Nano Small Cell
3. Small Cells are growing in India
4. Ericsson Radio Dot: Evolution and Technical information
5. Antennas for Small Cells and C-RAN (note, it was posted in 2016)

Related posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: Top 10 posts for 2017 and some other 3G4G info
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Top 5 posts for 2016
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Top 5 posts for 2015
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Top 5 posts for 2014

Small Cells are growing in India

Its been a long time since I looked at small cells (femtocells) in India. Things have changed significantly in these last 8 years. India now has second highest number of mobile phone users (1.2 billion), just after China. Free and cheap data has given rise to consumers who want to do more on their phones than just call and WhatsApp.

I recently came across a presentation by Paul Senior, Airspan in UK Spectrum Policy Forum workshop on Spectrum Sharing in 3.8 - 4.2GHz Band. This presentation provides interesting insight into Reliance Jio Small cells deployment and also provides much more details of the Sprint MagicBox.

The presentation is embedded below: