Fig 8 Fiber Cable With Yarn

Overseas optical‑cable manufacturers have secured large‑scale orders from North‑American cloud‑service providers.

In August 2024, Corning Incorporated inked a next‑generation fiber‑optic cable supply agreement with Lumen Technologies. This deal marked the largest‑ever optical‑cable procurement in Lumen's history. Under the contract, Lumen will lock in roughly 10 % of Corning's global fiber production capacity annually over the following two‑year period, to satisfy demands for AI‑data‑center interconnection from cloud vendors including Microsoft. Furthermore, in January 2026, Corning signed a multi‑year supply contract worth up to USD 6‑billion with Meta to support its data‑center construction projects. These substantial orders demonstrate that AI‑computing‑power construction across North America is directly driving the procurement boom of optical fibers and cables.

From a long‑term perspective, hollow‑core fiber (HCF), a disruptive innovation, is moving out of laboratories and into initial commercial deployment. Light signals travel through hollow‑core fibers at a speed close to the velocity of light in a vacuum. Its transmission latency stands around 30 % lower than that of conventional optical fibers, and its transmission loss can reach as low as 0.1 dB/km. Such outstanding properties are vital for low‑latency interconnection inside AI computing clusters. Setting aside constraints such as production costs, its primary application scenarios are listed below:

1.Long‑haul trunk lines (over 100 km): Within the identical spectrum bandwidth, hollow‑core fibers deliver around three‑fold the transmission capacity of standard G.652 fibers.

2.Data‑center interconnection (2‑20 km): They expand the geographic coverage of data centers and offer greater flexibility for site selection.

3.Intra‑data‑center links (20‑500 m): Replacing traditional fibers with hollow‑core alternatives under the existing network architecture can theoretically lift computing efficiency by over 10 %.

Microsoft announced in 2025 plans to deploy approximately 15 000 kilometers of hollow‑core fiber within two years. AWS also began deploying hollow‑core fibers to interconnect its data‑center sites in 2025. Though hollow‑core fibers remain high‑priced at present, active adoption by major cloud‑service giants signals accelerated commercialization for this cutting‑edge technology.