Meta's Petal cable to double transatlantic capacity with petabit-per-second speed
Meta announced Petal, a subsea cable spanning 7,000 kilometers between France and the United States, capable of 1 petabit per second using 48 fiber pairs and multi-core fiber. The cable, built with NEC and Sumitomo Electric, is expected to enter service in 2029 and will double the capacity of Meta's previous Anjana system. Meta claims the bandwidth could support simultaneous music streaming for 75% of the global population at low bitrates.
The Petal system uses 48 fiber pairs arranged as 24 two-core pairs, departing from conventional single-core designs. To maintain signal integrity across the 7,000-kilometer span, Meta employs ultra-pure synthetic silica in preform production and counter-propagates optical signals to suppress crosstalk. The cable's roughly 100 repeaters use a single-body 96-amp design with Fan-In/Fan-Out interfaces converting between two-core and single-core fiber during amplification.
Petal's predecessor, Anjana, connects Spain to the US over 4,425 miles with 24 fiber pairs delivering 480 Tbps. The new system's 1 Pbps capacity doubles that throughput. Meta partners with NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries for construction, with Orange supporting the French landing. Service begins in 2029.
The Petal cable could meaningfully reshape transatlantic data infrastructure, potentially easing bandwidth constraints for cloud services, streaming platforms, and AI workloads that increasingly depend on cross-ocean connectivity. Businesses and consumers in France and the US may see improved reliability and lower latency for international traffic, while the cable's petabit-class capacity could support future demand growth for years. However, such infrastructure also concentrates critical internet pathways in physical assets vulnerable to disruption, meaning resilience and security considerations may grow alongside capacity.