AI Data Center Demand to Widen Global Fiber Supply Gap to 200M Core-Km by 2027

The forecast's real signal is structural, not cyclical: preform expansion lead times of 18 to 24 months mean the shortfall cannot be arbitraged away within the forecast window, so fiber moves from a commodity to a bottleneck input for AI buildout. The call for a coordination mechanism is the more telling detail — producers are already positioning for the 2028 wave of concentrated capacity, suggesting the industry fears repeating its own boom-bust pattern rather than genuinely managing scarcity. Whether such coordination emerges, and whether the forecast holds as AI demand assumptions shift, is the open question.