- Meta’s Petal cable will carry a petabit of data every single second
- The cable stretches roughly 7,000 kilometers between the United States and France
- Meta expects Petal to enter commercial service sometime in 2029
Meta has announced Petal, a subsea cable system built to carry a petabit of data every second across the Atlantic Ocean.
The company says this new system will stretch roughly 7,000 kilometers, or about 4,300 miles, linking the United States and France.
Meta expects Petal to enter service in 2029, working alongside NEC Corporation and Sumitomo Electric Industries on its construction and eventual deployment.
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How Petal reaches such enormous speed
Undersea cables already carry about 99% of the world’s intercontinental internet traffic, according to Meta, making new capacity increases commercially significant.
Traditional transatlantic cables move data in terabits each second, but Petal aims for petabit scale, roughly a million gigabits every second.
“Achieving petabit-per-second capacity across a transoceanic submarine system represents a major technological milestone in the history of global telecommunications,” said Eduardo Mateo, Chief Strategy Officer, Submarine Network Division at NEC Corporation.
According to Meta’s estimate, that much capacity could let 75% of Earth’s population stream music simultaneously.
Reaching that scale required multi-core fiber technology, doubling the 24 fiber pairs used on Meta’s earlier Anjana cable system into 48 spatial channels.
Petal also uses a lower power repeater design that allows the entire system to run from a single feeding point for added resilience.
That capacity would make Petal roughly 3.3 million times faster than a typical American home internet connection, based on average broadband speeds.
At that speed, Petal could theoretically move every song ever commercially released to another continent in under one second.
Meta says Petal will double existing transoceanic capacity without adding more power equipment or new physical structures, a claim still untested outside controlled trials.
Undersea cables remain critical infrastructure despite the cost
Communication traffic keeps rising as AI tools and everyday digital services demand more resilient, reliable connections between continents.
This is why Meta keeps expanding its subsea capacity across multiple regions and long-distance routes worldwide.
The company has backed more than 20 subsea cable projects already, including its wider Project Waterworth initiative, giving it a long record in undersea infrastructure.
“Meta continues to invest in digital infrastructure, such as subsea cables, because they are foundational to delivering the high quality services our end users expect,” said Alex-Handrah Aime, Vice President, Network Investments at Meta.
Sumitomo Electric echoed that reasoning, framing its new two-core fiber as essential to supporting long-term global network expansion.
“We are committed to supporting the global network expansion essential to realizing a highly digital future,” said Takehiko Okada, General Manager, Optical Fiber and Cable Division at Sumitomo Electric Industries.
Whether Petal meets its 2029 deadline will depend on regulatory approval, ocean permitting, and manufacturing timelines that often slip for projects this size.
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