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. The fiber shortage is already here. “It's like the perfect storm,” Ashley Travers, chair of the Fiber Broadband Association's Supply Chain Working. Global bandwidth consumption is growing at unprecedented rates, and the industry faces an imminent capacity shortfall unless significant infrastructure investments are made, according to new research released by Zayo. 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. Researchers at NDSS 2026 demonstrate a covert acoustic eavesdropping attack that transforms standard FTTH telecom fiber cables into passive, undetectable listening devices invisible to RF scanners and immune to ultrasonic jammers. In August, Incab America, a Texan maker of fiber-optic cable, notified customers. Russia's only domestic producer of optical fiber has been offline since May 2025 following Ukrainian attacks, industry officials told the Vedomosti business daily on Thursday. The halted operations have left Russia fully dependent on Chinese supplies for a key component for telecommunications.
