Arman Obosyan

Update, September 2026: Meta’s newly announced Petal cable is another direct confirmation of the shift described in this article. https://engineering.fb.com/2026/09/21/connectivity/petal-petabit-transoceanic-subsea-cable/ Petal will span approximately 7,000 km between France and the United States, deliver 1 Pbps, and deploy multi-core fiber at transoceanic scale. But the strategic point is bigger than the capacity record. The project is led by Meta, the platform generating the demand. NEC will manufacture and install the system, Sumitomo Electric will supply the fiber, and Orange will support the French landing and terrestrial interconnection. The traditional telecom ecosystem remains essential, but its role is changing. The initiative, capital allocation, route logic, and technical ambition increasingly come from hyperscalers. Together with Google’s private cable portfolio and Meta’s Project Waterworth, Petal reinforces the central argument: content and cloud platforms are no longer merely buying connectivity from operators. They are increasingly deciding where the global backbone is built and what it will look like. The Internet’s new builders are already here.