Meta has chosen Indian port cities Mumbai and Visakhapatnam as the landing sites for its multibillion-dollar subsea cable Project Waterworth.
The tech giant has hired Sify Technologies as its landing partner in India under a $5 million contract.
Meta’s choice of Mumbai and Visakhapatnam (Vizag) as landing points for its Waterworth subsea cable underscores India’s rising strategic value in global digital infrastructure. By anchoring these cities in its 50,000 kilometer cable that links five continents, Meta strengthens India’s role as a communications hub while improving capacity, connectivity, and resilience across the region.
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Mumbai, already a major telecom and data centre node, stands to benefit from reduced latency and increased bandwidth, further reinforcing its leadership in India’s digital economy.
For Vizag, being selected as a landing site may catalyse greater connectivity and investment along India’s eastern coastline, spreading technological uplift beyond the usual western and southern hubs. Enhanced access could stimulate local digital ecosystems, boost regional infrastructure, and attract tech firms seeking robust backhaul capability.
Earlier this year, Meta announced Project Waterworth, an ambitious subsea cable initiative aimed at transforming global internet infrastructure. Spanning approximately 50,000 kilometers, this project is set to become one of the world’s longest undersea cable systems, connecting five continents—North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Key landing points include the United States, Brazil, India, South Africa, and others, with a focus on improving internet connectivity and bandwidth in both developed and underserved regions.
Project Waterworth is designed with 24 fibre pairs, giving it significantly higher capacity than most existing subsea cables. This is crucial for meeting Meta’s growing data demands driven by AI, virtual reality, and cloud services. The project will support faster, more resilient internet infrastructure, helping Meta ensure that its platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and future AI-driven services—can scale globally with low latency and high reliability.
The engineering behind Waterworth is also noteworthy. The cable will run through deepsea regions up to 7,000 meters below the surface and will be heavily protected near shores and high-risk zones to reduce the chance of faults due to fishing or natural disasters. It represents a multibillion-dollar investment in infrastructure that goes beyond commercial use—it is also intended to promote digital inclusion and bridge connectivity gaps in parts of the world still lacking robust internet access.
However, challenges remain. While Meta has not disclosed an exact completion date, the project is expected to take several years and may face geopolitical, regulatory, and environmental hurdles.
Still, Project Waterworth signals Meta’s long-term commitment to owning and controlling more of the global internet backbone and reflects a growing trend among tech giants investing directly in physical infrastructure to support their expanding digital ecosystems.
Additionally, the choice of two distinct landing sites in India, Mumbai on the west coast and Visakhapatnam on the east, suggests Meta’s intent to build redundancy and geographic diversity into its connectivity infrastructure. This dual-coast strategy could enhance national network resilience and provide more balanced internet access across India. It may also reduce pressure on traditionally overburdened landing stations like those in Mumbai and Chennai.
While the full commercial and policy implications are yet to unfold, this development positions India as a critical transit hub in the evolving global internet backbone. With growing demand for AI processing, cloud services, and data localization, such infrastructure investments are increasingly seen as essential for digital sovereignty and economic competitiveness.
If effectively supported by local partnerships and regulatory frameworks, Waterworth could reinforce India’s long-term digital ambitions, not just as a major consumer of data, but as a global infrastructure player.