Dark Fiber

Plenty of people might have heard of dark fiber before, but most of them have no clue what it’s all about. Rest assured, you don’t have to be a tech geek to understand.

Dark fiber actually refers to strands of fiber optic cable laid under the ground, but are currently not being used. You will find that these unused cables are stretched over thousands of miles across the United States.

Why are there few takers so far? Simply because the price tag to make it operational can amount to several numerical digits.

To understand how important dark fiber technology is, let’s back up a bit and get to know fiber optic technology a bit better.

An optical fiber or “fiber optic” to most people refers to the technology where transmission of information and data are carried out as light pulses inside a glass, plastic strand or fiber. Hence, the term dark fiber refers to its unused portion since there are no light pulses running inside it.

Using fiber optics is more advantageous since compared to copper wires, optical fibers are able to transfer information much faster since it is not subjected to interference. Moreover, their capacity is bigger and retransmission of signals are not necessary.

As mentioned, there are literally thousands of miles worth of dark fiber across the US simply because companies installed additional fiber optic systems in place hoping that in the future they can lease these same dark fiber to telephone, cable TV, or any other company looking to expand their reach.