Meta's Petal: World's First Petabit Transatlantic Subsea Cable
Doubling capacity with multi-core fiber technology between France and US by 2029.
1Petabit capacity breakthrough
Petal will be the first subsea cable to deliver 1 petabit per second (1,000 terabits) over 7,000 km between France and the US, doubling current transatlantic capacity. This equals simultaneous music streaming for 75% of global population. The system uses 24 fiber pairs with 2-core technology, equivalent to 48 conventional fibers, achieving this without proportional power increase.
2Multi-core fiber innovation
Sumitomo's 2-core fiber maintains 125μm width while minimizing crosstalk through ultra-pure silica and refractive index control. Each fiber strand carries counter-propagating signals like traditional fiber pairs. This spatial division multiplexing (SDM) approach marks the largest generational leap in subsea capacity, following Meta's progression from 8 to 24 fiber pairs in previous cables.
3Repeater engineering challenge
Petal's 96-amp repeaters use Fan-In/Fan-Out interfaces to split 2-core fibers into single cores for amplification, then recombine them. This preserves single-core amplification efficiency while handling 96 cores total. The design stays within existing 18kV power limits, avoiding ecosystem requalification needed for higher voltages that would accompany conventional capacity doubling methods.
4Industry collaboration
NEC engineered the turnkey system and invested in petabit-class manufacturing. Sumitomo developed the 2C Z-PLUS ULL Fiber with near-zero crosstalk. Orange handles French landing and European interconnection. This partnership builds on Meta's subsea investments like Marea (8 pairs) and Anjana (24 pairs), with Petal offering 5.5x Marea's capacity.
5Material and carbon savings
One petabit cable requires fewer materials than two 0.5 Pbps systems, reducing physical infrastructure and carbon footprint. The 2-core approach avoids doubling cable diameter or repeater count. Meta emphasizes this efficiency gain as critical for sustainable infrastructure scaling amid growing global bandwidth demands.
6Historical context
Since 1980s EDFA amplifiers, subsea capacity grew through coherent optics (2010s) and SDM. The Shannon Limit pushed innovation toward spatial solutions. Petal represents the first production-scale multi-core deployment after years of R&D, following experimental multi-core demonstrations in lab environments.
7European connectivity boost
As landing party, Orange will integrate Petal into European networks, enhancing resiliency for Meta's services. The cable supports growing transatlantic data traffic, currently carried by 99% of intercontinental communications via subsea fibers. Petal's capacity targets projected demand through the late 2020s.
8Industry-wide implications
Meta aims to establish multi-core fiber as a new subsea standard, inviting ecosystem adoption. The technology shift could redefine cable economics by enabling capacity growth without proportional infrastructure scaling. Successful deployment would validate SDM approaches for future transoceanic systems facing bandwidth demands from AI, metaverse, and 6G applications.