Meta floats project to lay first petabit submarine fiberoptic cable

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Petal will have twice the capacity of any other undersea cable yet built or planned.
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Credit: Shutterstock / Clever Stock

The 7,000 km (4,350 mile) cable, called Petal, will connect the US and France. Meta is partnering with NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries to build it, and working with French telecommunications company Orange to coordinate the landing of the cable on the French coast.

Petal will have more than double the capacity of today’s fastest transoceanic cables. Last November, AWS laid plans for a 320 Tbit/s cable between the US and Ireland, while a cable connecting Australia and the US, announced in January this year, will deliver 400 terabits per second.

The need for greater data connectivity has prompted a boom in subsea cable deployment, but their existence is making some US lawmakers rather twitchy, as they are fearful of the security implications. There have been calls for the big service providers to provide details of all the cables they have in place. The concerns are warranted given the number of incidents involving subsea cables.

This article first appeared on Network World.

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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