Meta announces a 7,000-kilometer transatlantic submarine cable with a record capacity of one petabit per second

Meta is financing and operating Project Petal, an approximately 7,000-kilometer-long fiber-optic submarine cable that is expected to carry data between the United States and France starting in 2029. The system is designed to reach a capacity of one petabit per second, equivalent to one million gigabits or approximately 125 terabytes of data transmitted every second.

If the announced specifications are achieved, Petal would become the first transoceanic system of its kind with petabit-scale capacity and would offer approximately twice the capacity of submarine cables of comparable length.

The project will use multicore optical fibers commercially, with two cores each through which signals will travel in opposite directions. The 24 fiber pairs, with a total of 96 cores, will provide capacity similar to that offered by 48 conventional pairs. NEC will design and build the system, while Sumitomo Electric will supply the optical fiber.

To maintain the signal along the transatlantic route, the cable will have approximately 100 repeaters. “Fan-in/fan-out” technology will enable the individual signals from each core to be separated and amplified without a proportional increase in energy consumption.

Submarine cables carry approximately 99% of global internet traffic. Petal continues Meta’s investments in this infrastructure, following the Marea, Amitie, and Anjana projects.