by Chris DePuy / September 24, 2026
This week, Meta, NEC, and Sumitomo Electric announced Petal, the first commercial petabit-class transoceanic submarine cable system, linking the US and France across roughly 7,000 km with service expected in 2029. Meta calls it the first multi-core fiber cable deployed at transoceanic distance and the single largest generational capacity increase in subsea history.
Where conventional cables top out in terabits per second, Petal targets one petabit per second using two-core fiber that carries two optical paths in a single fiber, plus an advanced single-housing, low-power repeater enabling single-end feeding for resilience. Its 48 core-pairs double the capacity of Anjana, the 24 fiber-pair transatlantic system the same three companies built. Meta funds and operates the cable, NEC handles design and construction, Sumitomo Electric supplies the two-core fiber, and Orange supports the French landing.
We read Petal as the clearest signal yet that hyperscaler self-build has moved to the center of optical infrastructure planning, and that multi-core fiber—not simply more fibers—is how operators intend to break the transatlantic capacity ceiling as AI-driven traffic compounds. Doubling capacity without a proportional increase in power or physical infrastructure is exactly the efficiency that matters on a corridor this contested.
650 Group researches several of the technologies we covered in this blog, including Data Center / Co-Location / Cloud and Service Provider.