Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), NEC Corporation (NEC), and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (Sumitomo Electric) have started collaboration to build “Petal”, a commercial petabit optical submarine cable system. Petal will become a transatlantic optical submarine system that will span approximately 7,000 km between the United States and France and is scheduled to commence operation in 2029.
Petabit is a unit of data volume, where one petabit equals 1,000 terabits. Petal will enable ultra-large-volume data communications at the petabit level per second. In a press release, the companies said that Meta will fund and operate the cable system. As part of this, NEC will be responsible for the overall design and construction of the two-core system, and Sumitomo Electric will provide the two-core fiber for the submarine cable system construction.
“Meta continues to invest in digital infrastructure, such as subsea cables, because they are foundational to delivering the high quality services our end users expect from us,” said Alex-Handrah Aimé, Vice President, Network Investments, Meta. “Petal will set a new standard for what cable systems can deliver and is a testament to the deep collaboration and innovation between Meta, NEC, and Sumitomo Electric.”
Eduardo Mateo, Chief Strategy Officer, Submarine Network Division, NEC Corporation, said, “Achieving petabit-per-second capacity across a transoceanic submarine system represents a major technological milestone in the history of global telecommunications.”
“We are thrilled that Sumitomo Electric’s innovative submarine multi-core fiber, “2C Z-PLUS Fiber™ ULL” will contribute to Petal,” said Takehiko Okada, General Manager, Optical Fiber & Cable Division, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
The transatlantic route connecting North America and Europe serves as a crucial communication infrastructure linking major digital hubs. It is therefore crucial to maintain and constantly improve its communication capacity and efficiency.
Petal will employ two-core fiber, with two optical transmission paths within a single fiber and an advanced single-housing repeater technology with reduced power consumption, aiming to enable single-end feeding for maximum network resilience.
With 48 pairs of spatial channels (core-pairs), Petal will achieve a transoceanic transmission capacity that doubles Anjana, the world’s first transoceanic 24 fiber-pair system (another collaboration between Meta, NEC, and Sumitomo Electric) and aims to be the world’s first petabit-class optical submarine cable system.