The spot price for China's mainstream G652. D optical fiber has risen over 400% since May 2025, hitting a record high, with the momentum spreading to European and U. The drivers are a surge in data center demand and tightening supply of upstream preforms. The global demand for fibre optic cable continues to grow rapidly. It is driven by a combination of factors, but broadly speaking, it includes continuing fibre broadband rollouts, the expansion of 5G, and the building of more data centres needed to store and distribute the massive amounts of data. A shortage of fiber-optic cable equipment is blamed on AI data center demands as well as US protectionism. Warnings about a US fiber crunch that could slow down broadband deployment have intensified since the summer. " This is not a temporary fluctuation. It is a. From a splicer's standpoint, ribbon cable is “much more user friendly and much more organized” because multiple fibers are bonded together. Estimated lead times for ribbon fiber are in the “60-plus weeks. Across the global telecommunications and data infrastructure sectors, a significant challenge has emerged: a structural shortage of core optical fiber types.
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