Meta unveils 7,000-km Petal cable aiming for 1 Pbps transatlantic speed
Meta announced a new undersea fiber link between the United States and France that would double the capacity of its existing Anjana system and target 1 Pbps throughput.
Meta disclosed plans for the Petal undersea cable, a more than 7,000-kilometre link connecting the United States and France. Featuring 48 fiber-pair strands and a two-core optical architecture, the system is designed to achieve 1 Pbps, double the 0.5 Pbps capacity of the existing Anjana cable that runs between Spain and the U.S. Meta estimates the new bandwidth could let roughly three-quarters of the global population stream music simultaneously.
To overcome signal loss over such distances, the cable will employ custom repeaters that separate the dual-core signal into conventional single-core paths for amplification before recombining them, a solution co-engineered with NEC and Sumitomo Electric. About 100 repeaters are expected along the route. The network is not expected to be operational until 2029, but if successful it would mark the start of a petabit-scale era for transatlantic data traffic.
Why it matters
The cable could dramatically boost global internet capacity, supporting data-intensive services and AI workloads.
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