All this talk about massive AI datacenters is well and good, but without communication, they're basically useless warehouses, as a CNBC video report rightfully points out. The undersea cabling infrastructure that wires the continents together is the web that holds the world together, and it's getting ever-increasing amounts of investments, to the tune of $13 billion over the next two years.
CNBC says this amount is roughly twice that of the 2022-2024 spend, and much as you'd expect, it's driven primarily by the big tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The report claims that existing cables already cover roughly 1 million miles (1.1 million km), and that number is getting larger every year. Paul Gabla from Alcatel, the world's largest undersea cable maker and installer, remarks that in the last decade, the Big Tech companies made up about 50% of the respective market.
