Meta to build 4,300-mile Petal subsea cable at 1 petabit per second

Meta will fund and operate Petal, a 4,300-mile (7,000 km) subsea fiber cable linking the U.S. and France with up to 1 million Gbps (1 Pbit/s) of capacity — double that of existing cables of this length. It is due online in 2029 and will be the first commercial subsea system to use multi-core fiber; NEC will design and build it, with Sumitomo Electric supplying the fiber.

• Capacity of 1 Pbit/s, roughly 125 TB of data per second
• First commercial cable with dual-core fiber: 24 pairs, 96 cores total
• Twice the capacity of comparable cables without proportional power increase
• Due in 2029; NEC handles design and construction, Sumitomo Electric the fiber