Microsoft Bets On Hollow Core Optical Fiber Being The Future Of High-Speed Data

A team of Microsoft-backed researchers has unveiled a new type of hollow core optical fiber that promises unprecedented speed and lower latency for the internet. This breakthrough was published this week in the Nature journal and if it pans out, could lead to a revolution in long-distance communications.

The research team, which has ties to the University of Southampton and is supported by Microsoft, has successfully improved on the recent double nested antiresonant nodeless hollow core fiber (DNANF) design. Unlike conventional optical fibers that guide light through a solid core of glass, hollow core features (as the name implies) a hollow, air-filled core surrounded by very thin glass membranes.

The significance of the team's development is two-fold. First, the new fiber has achieved a record-low optical loss of just 0.091 decibels per kilometer (dB km−1). In the world of fiber optics, a lower decibel loss means the ...