Meta is focused on increasing its investments in India’s digital infrastructure.

The internet giant, which has announced a “multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment” through Project Waterworth — a subsea cable network covering five major continents, including India — on Tuesday said that sub-sea and terrestrial connectivity would be crucial to support the growing data centre infrastructure in the country.

Speaking at the first international sub-sea cable systems conference organised by Broadband India Forum at New Delhi, Scott Cowling, director, network investments, Meta, said India has the opportunity to become one of the global digital infrastructure leaders in the coming years.

“India is already among the top 5 largest economies in the world and rapidly climbing up the ranks. The country has a highly educated and young demography. It has plentiful power and is advantageously positioned geographically. It is for these reasons and many more, Meta is focussed on increasing investment in India,” he said.

Last month, Meta announced the ambitious subsea cable endeavour that covers 50,000 km, which is longer than the Earth’s circumference (40,075 km). This makes it one of the longest subsea cable projects in the world and will strengthen internet connectivity in the US, India, Brazil, South Africa and other key regions.

“Project Waterworth is really sort of centered on India. It is W-shaped, and the peak of the W is in India with landing stations on both the east and west coast. This is one tangible example of the future importance that we see in India and I can assure there is much more to come,” Cowling said.

India has already drawn investments of over $6.5 billion in data centres between 2014 and 2024, and the segment is expected to grow at a rapid rate. However, Cowling said that to build a thriving data centre infrastructure over the next five years, an essential ingredient would be building the sub-sea and terrestrial connectivity.

“A data centre is just a very expensive building with more expensive equipment inside that is completely useless if there is no reliable connectivity,” he said.

Trai chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti, who was present at the event, said that submarine cables are a vital digital communication infrastructure.

“With the changing dynamics of geopolitical situation, these critical infrastructure are new strategic assets in the ocean and these could be vital for any nation,” he said.

India hosts around 17 international sub-sea cables across 16 district landing stations.