JAMES LEIGHLAND: Meta’s ‘W’ is coming: should SA be worried?

Tech industry insiders are reporting that Facebook parent company Meta is preparing to finance, build and operate an undersea fibreoptic cable of unprecedented size and scope, involving 40,000km of cable and as much as $10bn in investment over the next decade.

Industry blogger Sunil Tagare reports that this super-cable (nicknamed “W” because of its shape) would connect the east coast of the US to SA, India, Australia and back to the west coast of the US, creating a global data loop that would capture hundreds of millions of new customers for Meta products and services such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Such a cable presents risks to SA’s sovereignty that the country’s policymakers may not be prepared for. Projects like this often go largely unnoticed in the international media, sometimes because the importance of undersea cables is misunderstood and underestimated.

The aggressive promotion of satellite internet services by companies such as Elon Musk’s Starlink contribute to the widespread misconception that satellites can or eventually will play a dominant role in transmitting global internet traffic. However, the reality is that because of high investment and maintenance costs, as well as sensitivity to weather conditions, satellites transmit little more than about 1% of global internet traffic and that percentage is unlikely to change much over the long term. 

News of Meta’s super-cable may also not attract much attention in SA because the country is already connected to several major undersea cables that provide substantial international bandwidth, including Seacom, the West Africa Cable System, the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System, and Africa Coast to Europe. Built between 2009 and 2012, these are all now considered outdated, low capacity “legacy” cables fast approaching end of life.

However, next-generation cables with improved efficiency and enhanced capacity have been added to the mix, including the 2Africa cable backed by Meta and Google’s Equiano cable. These are sometimes referred to as “OTT cables” because of the dominant involvement of “over-the-top content providers”.   

Though SA may have access to enough international bandwidth to meet the current needs of connected users, it still does not have fast enough access to Big Data to facilitate the kind of growth needed to realise an advanced digital economy, the objective of government’s 2021 digital economy master plan. 

Such an economy is driven by frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the internet of things, and characterised by expanded cloud services, the deployment of 5G and eventually 6G networks, expanded video streaming and gaming, and increased digitalisation of public services.   

Costs and risks

Meta understands the needs of its potential future customers. The advances and growth associated with the realisation of an advanced digital economy rely on the availability of enormous amounts of high-speed data, to which SA does not yet fully have access. But dependence on OTTs such as Meta comes with significant costs and risks.

Over the past decade the share of submarine cable capacity used by the four main, US-based OTTs (Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon) has increased from 10% to 71%. According to recent surveys, Google is a part or sole owner of 33 subsea cables, Meta owns 15 cables, Microsoft owns five and Amazon owns four. 

Large, new undersea cables are now likely to be financed, owned and operated by these companies. These OTTs are quickly expanding their control over the entire internet service value chain, from content to storage, processing and transport.   

Policymakers in countries such as Australia, Singapore and Denmark are warning that this new role allows these companies to exert control over service quality and the security of these networks and threatens the principle of an “open internet” where all content and services are equally accessible without preferential treatment.

In its 2024 report on undersea cables, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warned that “consolidation of control also poses a broader challenge to national sovereignty, as it heightens the vulnerability of nations to the strategic interests of those powerful corporations”. 

The OTT threat does not stop there. There are clear signs that the US OTTs will exercise their growing industry dominance in support of the US’ digital competition with China. The two countries are dramatically accelerating efforts to exclude each other from their digital networks.

For example, the US has blocked new submarine cables that directly connect the US with mainland China or Hong Kong, or US-connected cables that involve Chinese telecom carriers. That means Meta’s new super-cable are not likely to connect to Chinese technology or data sources, or carry Chinese content.

Meta is not the only US-based OTT playing this game. In May Google announced its Umoja (Swahili for unity) cable, to be built from Australia to SA, and to extend terrestrially to Kenya with the support of Liquid Intelligent Technologies. Google is also busy in the Pacific Ocean building other cables that encircle Pacific Islands, all of this apparently in an effort to control these oceans and territories and prevent China’s involvement in these cables. A September article by Reuters also drew attention to US efforts to steer Vietnam away from using Chinese companies in its cable laying plans.   

All of this raises questions about the role of Meta’s “W” cable as a reliable, neutral source of global internet data at a time when SA is making an effort to act as an even-handed connection point between East and West, providing a bridge between these two rival superpowers. It doesn’t help that there are also long-standing allegations, fuelled by the Snowden leaks, that the US and its allies are working with US cable operators to eavesdrop on international cable traffic.   

SA has an opportunity to take advantage of its neutrality to become a global digital hub. It is the only place in the world where two major oceanic regions can interconnect in one country, with immediate deep-ocean cable routings. But to realise this potential the country's policymakers need to understand the value of Big Data along with the associated opportunities and risks.

As OTTs become more influential within the subsea cable ecosystem, several questions need to be addressed: 

• How does the concentration of submarine cable ownership and stewardship of data by a few US-dominated companies affect SA’s broader data goals and its national vision for data?
• What are the related digital supply-chain risks to data confidentiality and data availability, and how can they be balanced against the economic benefits of data?
• Are current regulations against anticompetitive behaviour and defending privacy concerns strong enough and applicable to internationally sourced communication technology and services?
• Should there be regular reviews of all public — private partnerships involving submarine cables and related digital infrastructure?   

As in every emerging advanced digital economy, South Africans are beginning to appreciate the business and entertainment value of more digital data and faster internet connectivity. However, our growing addiction to data should not blind us to the fact that these benefits come with huge risks and potential unforeseen costs that we need to better understand.   

• Leighland, a former World Bank infrastructure specialist, is an infrastructure investment adviser based in Cape Town.