Meta plans 'Petal' subsea cable to deliver 1 petabit/s across the Atlantic by 2029

Meta said Monday it plans to build a new transatlantic subsea cable linking the United States and France, a system the company says will deliver 1 petabit per second of capacity when it enters service in 2029. In announcements posted Sept. 21 on its Newsroom site and engineering blog, Meta described the planned cable, called Petal, as “the first subsea cable to deliver petabit capacity at transoceanic distances,” a claim the company made for the project.

The announcement matters because of the scale involved. Subsea cables carry about 99% of intercontinental internet traffic, and a 1 petabit-per-second transatlantic system would mark a sharp jump in capacity on one of the world’s busiest digital routes. It is also another example of a large technology company financing and shaping the physical backbone of the internet, rather than relying only on traditional telecom operators.

Meta said Petal will span about 7,000 kilometers, or 4,300 miles, between the United States and France. The company said it will build the project with NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, while Orange will support the French landing. Meta did not disclose the exact landing points on either side of the Atlantic beyond saying the cable will land in France and connect to the United States.

In technical terms, Meta said Petal will use 2-core fiber technology in a 24 fiber-pair system, which it said is equivalent to 48 fiber pairs. Put simply, the design is meant to pack more transmission capacity into the cable without requiring a new subsea power standard. Meta also said the repeater system — the undersea equipment that boosts the optical signal along the route — is designed to stay within existing power-feeding limits rated up to 18 kilovolts. Meta separately said Petal will be “the first cable system with multi-core fiber technology deployed at transoceanic distances,” another company claim. Multi-core fiber has previously been demonstrated in research settings, including NEC experiments over transoceanic distances, but Meta is presenting Petal as the first commercial transoceanic deployment at this scale.

The capacity target would put Petal in a different class from today’s best-known transatlantic systems. Google’s Dunant cable, which was ready for service in 2021, was announced with about 250 terabits per second of design capacity. Meta’s own Anjana system, described by the company in 2024, was a roughly 7,121-kilometer transatlantic cable with 24 fiber pairs and nearly 500 terabits per second of capacity. If Petal is delivered as described, its 1,000-terabit-per-second capacity would roughly double the current top tier of transoceanic cable capacity.

Orange, the French telecom operator supporting the landing in France, underscored the significance of that milestone. “Reaching one petabit on a transatlantic link, 25 years after the terabit milestone, represents a significant breakthrough to meet the exponential traffic growth while optimizing network capacity,” Jean-Louis Le Roux, executive vice president of Orange International Networks, said in the announcement.

Meta said it has invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects. Petal adds to that broader footprint as major tech companies take a larger role in funding long-haul infrastructure that underpins global internet traffic. The company did not disclose the project’s ownership or commercial model, including whether capacity will be sold to third parties, and it did not provide further details on the exact U.S. and French landing sites.