Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has announced plans to build a groundbreaking undersea internet cable connecting the United States and France. Named Petal, the 4,300-mile (approximately 7,000-kilometre) cable is designed to deliver data transmission capacity of up to one petabit per second, making it the first transoceanic cable system planned to reach this capacity.
The project is expected to become operational in 2029 and aims to double the capacity of today’s most advanced transoceanic cable systems. It will support the growing demand for internet connectivity, cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.
Meta is developing Petal in partnership with Japanese technology companies NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries. French telecommunications company Orange is also collaborating on plans to bring the cable ashore on France’s Atlantic coast.
The cable will use advanced multi-core fibre technology, featuring two optical cores within each fibre. This design will allow more data to travel through the same physical infrastructure without requiring a proportional increase in power consumption.
One petabit per second equals 1,000 terabits per second, representing an enormous increase in data-carrying capacity. According to Meta, the system could provide enough capacity for approximately 75 per cent of the world’s population to stream music simultaneously.
Undersea cables are essential to the global internet, carrying around 99 per cent of intercontinental data traffic. They support everything from messaging and video calls to online entertainment, financial transactions and business communications.
Meta says Petal will strengthen international connectivity as its digital platforms and AI services continue to expand. However, the project is not expected to make every user’s internet connection automatically faster, since actual speeds also depend on local networks, internet providers and server capacity.
The initiative highlights the growing importance of digital infrastructure as technology companies invest in networks capable of handling the world’s rapidly increasing data demands.
