The system is designed with 24 fibre pairs at 20.7 Tbps each, for a total design capacity of around 497 Tbps.

What stands out is not the size but the structure. Aurora is being built as an open cable system, meaning separate fibre owners will be able to run their own submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) rather than relying on a single operator’s electronics. Meta’s filing also raises the possibility of selling dark fibre into the secondary market, rather than reserving all capacity for internal use.

That structure is becoming the default for hyperscaler-built cables, and it says a lot about how the subsea market has changed heading into Capacity Europe 2026, where fibre and subsea financing forms one of the four core agenda tracks.

What open cable actually means

Traditional subsea systems bundle the physical cable together with the electronics that light it. One operator or consortium controls both, so a customer buying capacity is also buying into that operator’s choice of vendor and upgrade schedule.

Open cable systems separate the two. Each fibre-pair owner deploys and manages its own terminal equipment, so it can choose its own vendor, upgrade independently, and light capacity on its own timeline rather than waiting on consortium-wide coordination.

Why hyperscalers are choosing it now

Google now holds stakes in around 34 subsea systems, Meta in roughly 19 to 20, with Microsoft and Amazon on ten more between them. Hyperscalers’ share of international bandwidth use has grown from close to nothing in 2010 to an estimated 71 to 75% today. At that scale, three factors are pushing hyperscalers towards open designs.

The first is ownership economics. Hyperscalers are no longer capacity buyers negotiating wholesale deals with telco consortia. They are the ones financing and building routes, and owning the cable outright while keeping terminal equipment separate gives them more control over cost and timeline.

The second is monetisation. Aurora’s own filing points to a secondary market for dark fibre, allowing Meta to recoup cost from carriers and other hyperscalers without giving up primary ownership.

The third is technology refresh. Because each owner runs its own terminal gear, one owner can move to newer coherent optics without forcing a consortium-wide upgrade, useful as AI traffic patterns diverge further from legacy telecom traffic.

The Capacity Europe link

Fibre, subsea and network infrastructure sits alongside data centres, AI-ready networks and investment as one of four confirmed themes at Capacity Europe 2026, running 13 to 15 October at the InterContinental London, The O2. The agenda language is explicit: where capacity is needed, how it will be financed, and which partnerships will deliver it.

Aurora is a live example of that shift in progress. Meta is asking the FCC to rule by November, weeks after the event closes, which puts the licensing decision directly in the window Capacity’s before, during and after event coverage is built to track.

Coverage of the AI-driven surge in subsea investment has already tracked hyperscalers moving from wholesale customers to infrastructure architects, while reporting from Asia has covered hyperscaler-led route planning against a backdrop of Red Sea disruption and geopolitical risk.

V.tal’s US-Brazil system, announced earlier this year, was explicitly built with open cable technology to serve hyperscalers and carriers independently, and Microsoft’s India-Southeast Asia consortium with Lightstorm shows the same hyperscaler-adjacent build pattern playing out beyond the transatlantic corridor.

Aurora is one data point in that wider thesis: subsea ownership is consolidating around hyperscalers, and the systems they build are increasingly designed to let others buy in on their own terms.

RELATED STORIES

Subsea cable investment hits new heights as AI drives demand for ocean bandwidth

How Asia’s subsea cables are changing connectivity logic

V.tal subsea cable to link the US and Brazil

Microsoft, Lightstorm-led consortium to build India-Southeast Asia undersea cable