Facebook-backed 2Africa consortium says its subsea internet cable will include Middle East and India when it launches in 2023, expanding on Europe and Africa
A Facebook-backed consortium of tech companies has announced an extension to a subsea cable system it's developing that is set … Source: Facebook Engineering .
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2Africa project has been scaling steadily since Facebook first partnered with China Mobile and others in 2020 on an undersea cable reported at around $1B to bring faster internet to Africa. In August alone, the consortium announced an expansion to 35 landings across 26 countries, and Facebook separately committed to 1,243 miles of terrestrial fiber in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that will plug into 2Africa in 2024.
Adding the Middle East and India extends that same system into South Asian and Gulf markets just before its 2023 launch — and puts it alongside Facebook's other subsea bets, including [[a:1160001|two planned cables with Google and local telcos linking Singapore, Indonesia, and North America]]. The pattern: Facebook is no longer renting long-haul capacity but commissioning its own routes.
First-order effects
- Consortium members Facebook, China Mobile, and MTN Group now control a single system spanning Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India by 2023, giving them direct capacity into two of the world's fastest-growing data markets.
- Indian and Gulf operators connected to 2Africa gain a new source of international bandwidth backed by Facebook's traffic demand rather than traditional carrier sales.
Second-order effects
- Competing hyperscalers are already moving the same way — Google is a partner on the separate Japan-Singapore-Taiwan-Guam-Philippines-Indonesia system launching 2024 — forcing regional carriers and cable operators to compete for hyperscaler landing partnerships instead of selling transit on their own terms.
- Landing-station countries along the extended route gain leverage as Facebook, China Mobile, and MTN bid for permits and shore infrastructure, echoing the multi-country negotiation the consortium ran to reach its 35-landing footprint in Africa.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, subsea infrastructure shifts from carrier consortia to tech-company-financed backbones, with platforms like Facebook and Google deciding where bandwidth lands based on where their users and services grow.
- Terrestrial last-mile projects such as the Congo fiber tie-in suggest the next bottleneck moves onshore: owning the cable matters less than controlling the fiber that carries it inland, pressuring national operators to partner or cede access economics.
The trend: Big tech is financing its own global subsea backbones, converting connectivity from leased commodity into owned infrastructure aligned with each platform's user geography.