Meta announced Petal, its first submarine cable designed to carry up to 1 petabit of data per second on transoceanic routes. This system is scheduled to begin operation in 2029 and will establish a link between the east coast of the United States and France, covering an approximate distance of 7 thousand kilometers.
This project, disclosed on Monday (09/21), aims to increase the intercontinental data transmission capacity of the internet without needing to expand existing physical infrastructure. The company considers this technological advance the greatest achieved in a generation of submarine cables. Compared to previous projects by Meta itself, Petal will be 5.5 times more powerful than Marea, which was the company's first transatlantic infrastructure investment.
Technologically, Petal employs a two-core multicore architecture, which utilizes light propagation capacity in a single glass filament, using an arrangement of 24 fiber pairs that functions as if they were 48 pairs. To ensure this structure operates over the 7 thousand kilometers without excessive attenuation or interference, the manufacturing uses ultra-high purity synthetic silica and maintains the industry standard thickness of 125 micrometers, similar to the diameter of a hair strand, but doubles the data transmission density.
The complexity of this innovation required the collaboration of several telecommunications industry companies. The responsibility for the entire system construction and technology integration fell to the Japanese supplier NEC. Eduardo Mateo, Director of Strategy for the Submarine Networks Division at NEC Corporation, stated that achieving one petabit per second in a transoceanic system constitutes a historic feat, resulting from decades of investment in research and development to connect the planet.
Regarding the precision raw material, it was developed in Japan by Sumitomo. Takehiko Okada, General Manager of the optical fiber division at Sumitomo Electric Industries, emphasized that the innovative multicore fiber created for the project offers performance almost identical to traditional single-core fiber, resulting in minimal loss in data flow.
In Europe, the physical reception organization of the cable will be conducted by the operator Orange. This company will be responsible for ensuring security and longevity on the terrestrial side, enabling this next-generation connectivity to be extended to other European countries.