Meta's Petal submarine cable aims for petabit-per-second transatlantic capacity

Meta is developing a new transatlantic submarine cable named Petal, scheduled to become operational in 2029 and designed to move up to one petabit of data each second between the United States and France. The cable relies on commercial multicore fiber, featuring two cores per strand and a total of 96 cores across 24 fiber pairs, which equates to the capacity of 48 conventional fiber pairs. NEC will lead the overall system design and construction, while Sumitomo Electric will provide the optical fiber.

To maintain signal integrity over the long distance, the cable will incorporate roughly 100 repeaters that use a fan-in/fan-out approach, separating and amplifying signals from each core before recombining them. Meta claims this architecture can double data capacity without a proportional rise in energy use. Petal follows Meta's earlier submarine projects, including Marea, Amitie, and Anjana, and would markedly exceed their capacities.