Meta announces Petal cable: 7,000 km under the Atlantic with a capacity of 1 petabit per second

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has announced the construction of a new fibre-optic cable on the Atlantic seabed. The system, called Petal, is to be around 7,000 km long and will connect France with the United States.

Record capacity

According to Meta, Petal will be the first transoceanic subsea cable with a capacity in the petabit range. It is designed to carry 1 petabit per second, or 1,000 terabits per second. That is twice as much as the most advanced cables over this distance.

For comparison, the company says this is roughly what it would take for 75% of the world's population to stream music at the same time.

What is new

Petal is to be the first cable to use multi-core optical fibres on such a large scale. The cable will have 24 fibre pairs, and each fibre has two cores, which gives the equivalent of 48 pairs. Meta's earlier cables had eight pairs (Marea), 16 pairs (Amitié) and up to 24 fibre pairs (Anjana) respectively.

Meta claims that the higher capacity was achieved without a proportional increase in energy consumption and infrastructure. According to Spider's Web, a route of this length usually requires around a hundred signal amplifiers.

Who is building it

For the project, Meta is working with the Japanese companies NEC (cable systems) and Sumitomo Electric Industries (optical fibres). The French operator Orange is involved in plans for the cable's landing on the Atlantic coast of France. According to Bankier.pl, the cable is to enter service in 2029; this information was not given in the Spider's Web article.

Why it matters

Around 99% of internet traffic between continents passes through subsea cables. Growing demand for digital services and the development of artificial intelligence are increasing the importance of this kind of infrastructure. Meta states that it has already invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects.

What this means for Poles in the UK

The sources do not indicate that Petal will have a direct impact on the price or speed of home internet in the UK or in Poland. The cable connects France with the USA, and it is not planned to go live until 2029. It is an investment in infrastructure that indirectly benefits services operating between Europe and America, including messaging apps and websites.