The place Fiber Meets The Future
Over a number of many years, Lumen has constructed the biggest ultra-low-loss fiber optic community in North America, connecting main cities and information facilities by its infrastructure. Because the calls for of generative AI (Gen AI) push the boundaries of in the present day’s infrastructure, the necessity for sooner, denser and extra resilient fiber networks has by no means been better.
Enter Corning, the corporate that invented the primary low-loss optical fiber in 1970. Collectively, Lumen and Corning are engineering a breakthrough: a next-generation optical fiber that’s smaller in diameter however larger in influence—designed to spice up bandwidth, scale back latency and future-proof the spine of the AI economic system.
On this dialog, leaders from each firms share how this collaboration is reshaping the way forward for connectivity.
Dr. Claudio Mazzali, VP of International Analysis at Corning Integrated: If you concentrate on the planet’s inhabitants in the present day—like seven, eight billion individuals—with one single optical fiber, you possibly can have half of the planet speaking on the telephone with the opposite half of the planet. Then when you concentrate on how a lot science is enabling actual purposes and really altering not solely individuals’s lives, however altering the world—yeah, it provides you goosebumps, for positive.
Mike O’Day, Sr. VP and Basic Supervisor of Corning Optical Communications: Corning is a 175-year-old glass and ceramic materials science firm, and so we’ve labored with the wonders of these supplies to allow improvements that make the world just a bit bit higher [of a] place. Again in 1970, Corning invented the primary low-loss optical fiber. Now, 55 years later, there hasn’t been one other materials that has confirmed to be sooner, higher or extra possible to scale telecommunications globally than optical fiber.
Rob Ward, Sr. VP of Community Engineering at Lumen: Lumen is the spine of the AI economic system. Lumen has the biggest inner-city, ultra-low-loss fiber community in North America. AI requires huge bandwidth, low latency, excessive resiliency. Yesterday’s networks simply gained’t meet the wants of tomorrow’s AI. As Lumen started to see the calls for, it was some extent that we stated, Wow, we’re going to want an even bigger boat. We anticipate to triple over the subsequent three years what we had collectively constructed during the last 25—that’s huge.
Mazzali: Lumen got here to us with the clear want that we’ve to attach information facilities, we’ve to attach Gen AI clients and we principally must put extra optical capability contained in the routes that we’ve. You might have a restricted quantity of house, and also you need to put extra fiber into that house, so we have to make the fiber even smaller and with extra capability.
O’Day: Consider an optical fiber as one thing much like a strand of human hair. There’s a lot information that may be despatched down that single strand, so the extra fibers you possibly can slot in that bodily house, the extra bandwidth you could generate.
Mazzali: For this particular collaboration with Lumen, we made a fiber that’s smaller in diameter, and that permits you to put extra fiber into the identical cable and the identical ducts that you just’re transmitting.
Ward: For companies, this implies sooner connectivity [and] extra dependable connections. For AI-powered purposes, it means automation, information analytics [and] extra real-time entry.
So it’s actually a few of these foundational improvements—that Corning is doing, that Lumen is doing—that allows our clients to innovate sooner, to help their clients higher and unlock income alternatives. None of that may occur with out networks which are capable of transfer and shield huge quantities of knowledge immediately.
O’Day: There actually aren’t two different firms on the earth that might do what Corning and Lumen are doing collectively proper now.
Ward: We’re making ready for not simply the subsequent three years or 5 years, however working to construct one thing lengthy into the longer term.
Uncover how Lumen’s next-gen fiber networks are powering AI innovation at scale.
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