If nearly three-quarters of the world streamed music all at once, it would produce an overwhelming flood of data.

Now, Meta’s new project aims to carry that vast amount of digital traffic through “glass strands” laid across 4,300 miles of deep ocean floor.

The tech giant is planning to achieve this ambitious task with Petal, its newly unveiled transatlantic subsea cable set to go live in 2029.

Petal will deliver 1 Petabit per second (1 Pbps or or 1,000 terabits per second) capacity across transoceanic distances. It is also said to be the world’s first petabit-class transoceanic subsea cable, connecting France and the United States. 

Meta squeezes two independent light-guiding cores into a single standard glass strand to double its bandwidth. This simple redesign boosts capacity without increasing the cable’s physical size or power needs.

“We’re moving multi-core fiber from experimental to mainstream, making it a practical design for building subsea systems at scale – a shift the entire industry can benefit from. Our aim is to set a new standard for what undersea infrastructure can deliver and invite the ecosystem to invest alongside us,” the company stated. 

Despite carrying nearly 99 percent of international data traffic, subsea internet infrastructure is hitting strict physical limits.

Engineers trying to support swelling AI workloads, video streaming, and cloud services often add thicker cables with more fiber pairs. More fibers mean heavier cables, larger ships, and dangerously high operating voltages.

Meta’s solution was to stop adding more cables and start redesigning the glass itself.

Source link