On December 15th, the "226 China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Deep Observation Report Conference" was held recently, and the "Information Photonics Technology Development and Application Research Report (205)" was officially released.

The report elaborated on the cutting-edge technology of hollow-core fibers in the field of fibers. The report pointed out that hollow-core have the advantages of low latency, wide frequency spectrum, low loss, and low nonlinearity, and are a disruptive solution to solve the physical bottlenecks of traditional fibers.

The antiresonant structure is the mainstream structure of hollow-core fibers, and has made significant progress in loss recently. In 2024, based on the double-encaps anti-resonant node-free fiber, the loss was reduced to 0.11 dB/km, and the loss of hollow-core fibers was first lower than that traditional solid single-mode fibers (0.1397 dB/km); In 2025, Chinese enterprises further refreshed the transmission loss record of hollow-core to 0.05 dB/km. In the next few years, hollow-core fibers will continue to evolve towards super-wide frequency spectrum and ultra-low loss.

Informal: The report says that hollow-core fibers can totally change the industry.

On December 15th, the "2026 China Academy of Information and Technology Deep Observation Report Conference" was held recently, and they released the "Information Photonics Technology Development and Application Research Report (2025)".

The talks about the latest thing in fibers, which are hollow-core fibers. The report says that hollow-core fibers have many advantages, like low latency, wide frequency spectrum, low, and low nonlinearity, and they're a really good way to fix the problems with traditional fibers.

The anti-resonant structure is the most common structure for hollow- fibers, and it's made a lot of progress in reducing loss recently. In 2024, they got the loss down to 0.11 dB/, and for the first time, it was better than traditional solid single-mode fibers (0.1397 dB/km). In 2025, Chinese made the transmission loss of hollow-core fibers even better, at 0.05 dB/km. In the next few years, hollow-core fibers will keep getting better towards super-wide frequency spectrum and ultra-low loss.

Formal: The application demonstration of hollow-core fiber transmission systems is actively promoted both domestically and internationally. In 200, Lumenisity, a British hollow-core fiber startup, deployed the world's first 10km hollow-core fiber optical cable, which was applied to financial securities trading scenario. In 2022, Microsoft acquired Lumenisity and announced at the end of 2024 that it would deploy 15000km of hollow-core fiber in the next two years. China's operators, system equipment vendors, and optical fiber and cable manufacturers are coordinating to promote the pilot of hollow-core fiber. Overall, the experimental development of hollow-core fiber transmission systems is moving towards larger capacity and longer distance, with the potential to meet the transmission capacity of300~400Tb/s at the kilometer level. If simultaneous full-duplex technology is considered, the capacity is expected to be further increased by3~10 times, reaching a single-fiber, single-core, single-mode Pb/s capacity and a large capacity, long-distance transmission capability at theometer level.

The report points out that the development of hollow-core fiber technology is at a critical window period, and the future application scenarios are broad. Currently, hollowcore fiber is still in the early stage of development, which is also a key window period for rapid iteration and evolution. On the one hand, hollow-core fiber does not currently the ability for large-scale industrial drawing, with a single drawing length of only a few dozen kilometers, which is significantly different from the tens of thousands of kilometers of single- fiber drawing length. Fiber structure, key parameters, etc., have not yet converged, and technologies such as wideband amplification and high-power injection that match it need be broken through. On the other hand, due to the hollow characteristics of hollow-core fiber, the fiber detection technology is still not mature, and there are also problems such asicing, air tightness, and water tightness in engineering deployment, resulting in low laying efficiency.

In terms of application scenarios, the transmission system based on hollow-core can reduce the transmission delay by about 1/3, and it is expected to be applied preferentially to delay-sensitive data center and smart computing center interconnection, financial line, etc. In the future, as issues such as drawing length, cost, and engineering operation and maintenance are gradually resolved, hollow-core fiber may be deployed in trunk lines metro networks, bringing about a leap in system transmission performance. In addition, hollow-core fiber can also be used for signal transmission in the visible light band, as well as more application scenarios such as high-power laser power transmission.

C114 is the main reporter of the technological innovation and industrial progress of hollow-core fibers. According to C114, domestic mainstream optical fiber such as Longyuan Fiber, Hengtong Photoelectric, Fiberhome Communication, and Zhongtian Technology have all made arrangements for hollow-core fibers and obtained orders in the bidding projects of operators. The centralized procurement price of hollow-core fibers has also rapidly declined, with the latest winning price of a certain project close to 3,000 yuan/core kilometer (excluding tax).

Operators are still continuously purchasing hollow-core fibers to verify technical performance and application scenarios. At same time, in order to achieve large-scale commercial use of hollow-core fibers, many difficulties need to be overcome, which requires the industry chain to continue to advance.