Meta announces Petal undersea cable project

Meta has officially announced the Petal undersea cable project, a massive infrastructure undertaking designed to connect the United States and France. Spanning approximately 7,000 kilometers, the cable is scheduled to become operational by 2029.

The project aims to achieve a transoceanic bandwidth of 1 petabit per second, making it the first of its kind to reach such capacity. This translates to a data transfer rate of roughly 125 terabytes per second, capable of transmitting 25,000 high-definition films (at 5 GB each) every second.

Technologically, Petal will be the first commercial deep-sea system to utilize multi-core optical fibers over oceanic distances. This differs from traditional optical cables that rely on a single central core, significantly expanding the limits of intercontinental data transmission.