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Petal (subsea cable)

Petal is Meta's transatlantic submarine cable, announced 2026-09-21 and expected in service in 2029. It is "the first transoceanic subsea cable at petabit capacity, and the first to deploy multi-core fiber at scale." Spanning ~7,000 km (4,300 mi) between France and the United States, Petal delivers 1 Pbps (1,000 Tbps) — double Meta's Anjana (0.5 Pbps) at the same distance, and 5.5× the capacity of Marea, Meta's first transatlantic cable. (Source: sources/2026-09-21-meta-inside-petal-building-the-worlds-first-petabit-class-transoceanic-subsea-cable)

The 2-core fiber bet

Facing the SDM question of how to double from Anjana's 0.5 Pbps, Meta had three options — 48 conventional fiber pairs, a 24-pair C+L-band system, or 2-core fiber — and chose the last. Petal is a 24 fiber-pair system using 2-core fiber, "equivalent to 48 fiber pairs," which Meta calls "the single largest generational increase in cable capacity of any repeatered subsea system, ever." Carrying a petabit through one cable "significantly reduces materials, resources, and carbon footprint compared to building two 0.5 Pbps systems."

Meta's SDM scaling ladder (fiber count → core count):

Cable SDM approach Capacity
Marea 8 fiber pairs first Meta transatlantic
Amitié 16 fiber pairs —
Anjana 24 fiber pairs 0.5 Pbps (first 0.5 Pbps transatlantic)
Petal 24 pairs of 2-core fiber (48-pair equiv.) 1 Pbps

Architecture

  • Fiber — Sumitomo Electric's 2-core [[systems/sumitomo-2c-zplus-ull-fiber|2C Z-PLUS ULL fiber]]: standard 125 µm outer diameter, ultra-low loss, "nearly immeasurable crosstalk" via high-index cores + counter-propagating signals.
  • Repeater — a single-body 96-amp repeater using a Fan-In/Fan-Out (FIFO) interface to split 2-core fiber into two single-core fibers, amplify with an SDM pump-sharing architecture, then recombine — keeping single-core amplification efficiency/reliability. ~100 repeaters span the route.
  • Power — FIFO + efficient amplification + low-loss fiber let Petal double capacity without a proportional power increase, staying within existing ≤18 kV power-feeding-equipment limits and avoiding a subsea-ecosystem requalification.

Partners

  • NEC — turnkey system supplier: engineered and qualified the "world's first petabit transoceanic system" (cable + 2-core fiber + repeaters + FIFO + system powering), and manufactures + installs the final product.
  • Sumitomo Electric Industries — NEC's fiber supplier; developed the 2-core fiber (systems/sumitomo-2c-zplus-ull-fiber).
  • Orange — lands Petal on France's Atlantic coast and provides the European terrestrial interconnection and terrestrial-segment resilience.

Numbers

Metric Value
Capacity 1 Pbps (1,000 Tbps)
Length ~7,000 km (4,300 mi), France ↔ US
Fiber 2-core, 24 pairs (48-pair equivalent), 125 µm
Repeaters ~100; single-body 96-amp
Power limit ≤18 kV
In service 2029

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