For most of the last decade, the optical layer connecting data centers was an IT plumbing decision, delegated to network engineers and reviewed by executives only when something broke. That era is ending. As AI training workloads outgrow the power available at any single site, hyperscalers are splitting mega-clusters across multiple campuses, cities, and regions, and stitching them back together with high-capacity optical links so they behave as one logical data center. The connectivity choices being made right now, largely invisible to the CFO and the board, will determine which companies can scale AI infrastructure economically over the next decade and which will find themselves locked into constrained, expensive architectures. Optical Networking Market Development ABI Research forecasts that Open Line System, or OLS, scale-across revenue in the United States will climb from under $1 billion in 2026 to approximately $5 billion by 2035, a trajectory that reflects how quickly distribut...
TMT Market Research and Analysis