Microsoft acquires Lumenisity, a developer of hollow core fiber

Microsoft has acquired Lumenisity Limited, a start-up based in the UK developing hollow core fiber (HCF). Financial terms were not disclosed.

Lumenisity’s next generation of HCF uses a proprietary design where light propagates in an air core, which has significant advantages over traditional cable built with a solid core of glass, including:

• Increased overall speed and lower latency as light travels through HCF 47% faster than standard silica glass.
• Enhanced security and intrusion detection due to Lumenisity’s innovative inner structure.
• Lower costs, increased bandwidth and enhanced network quality due to elimination of fiber nonlinearities and broader spectrum.
• Potential for ultra-low signal loss enabling deployment over longer distances without repeaters.

Microsoft said it made the acquisition to optimize its global cloud infrastructure and serve its Cloud Platform and Services customers with strict latency and security requirements. 

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2022/12/09/microsoft-acquires-lumenisity-an-innovator-in-hollow-core-fiber-hcf-cable/

• Earlier this month, Lumenisity completed the development of the world’s first dedicated HCF manufacturing facility in Romsey, UK. The state-of-the art building spans 40,000 sq ft and will enable scaled up production of HCF technology in the future.

Lumenisity unveils Hollow Core Double Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber 

Thursday, March 10, 2022  Fiber, Lumenisity  

Lumenisity Limited, a start-up based in Romsey, United Kingdom, announced a new generation of hollowcore fibre with the lowest attenuation of any hollowcore fibre reported to date. The company says its new product surpasses the attenuation of conventional germanium-doped single-mode fibre (SMF) in the O and C bands. Specifically, Lumenisity’s new Hollow Core Double Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber (DNANF) achieves attenuations of <0.22...

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Comcast tests Lumenisity's hollowcore fiber

Wednesday, April 20, 2022  Comcast, Fiber, Hollowcore, Optical  

Comcast confirmed its first deployment of advanced hollowcore fiber optics.Comcast connected two locations in Philadelphia, which enables network engineers to continue to test and observe the performance and physical compatibility of hollowcore fiber in a real-world deployment. Comcast successfully tested bidirectional transmission (upstream and downstream traffic traveling on a single fiber), used coherent and direct-detect systems (allowing for...

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BT begins testing hollow core fibre

Tuesday, June 01, 2021  BT  

BT kicked off trials of hollow core fibre at the BT Labs in Adastral Park, Ipswich, in a collaborative project with Lumenisity, a Southampton University spin out company, and Mavenir.BT researchers are conducting the trials at BT’s research and engineering campus, using a 10-kilometre-long hollow core fibre cable provided by Lumenisity. The new fibre has a hollow, air filled centre that runs the entire length of the cable. It will be used to test...

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euNetworks deploys Lumenisity's hollowcore fibre

Wednesday, September 21, 2022  Fiber, Lumenisity, UK  

euNetworks Fiber UK has deployed a new ultra low latency route between Basildon and London that connects the ICE data centre to Interxion LON1 and LON2 and then onwards to Slough. The new route is over 45km long and includes 14 km of Lumenisity's CoreSmart hollowcore cable, which is compatible with regular single mode fibre.The route is the longest commercial deployment of hollowcore fibre technology to date and its use is exclusive to euNetworks...

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euNetworks deploys Lumenisity's hollowcore fibre

euNetworks Fiber UK has deployed a new ultra low latency route between Basildon and London that connects the ICE data centre to Interxion LON1 and LON2 and then onwards to Slough. 

The new route is over 45km long and includes 14 km of Lumenisity's CoreSmart hollowcore cable, which is compatible with regular single mode fibre.

The route is the longest commercial deployment of hollowcore fibre technology to date and its use is exclusive to euNetworks and its customers. It is also the first commercial construction of a long distance hybrid route of hollowcore fibre and regular single mode fibre.

Lumenisity says data travels 50% faster in hollowcore cable, reducing latency by 33%, and providing a round trip saving of 3μs (three microseconds) per kilometre. These latency savings are hugely significant in financial trading applications. They can also be scaled to increase the separation of data centres by 50%, whilst maintaining the latency envelope, more than doubling the area of land in which these data centres can be located.

“We have successfully delivered increasingly longer deployments of hollowcore fibre in our network, becoming the first fibre provider in the world to utilise the benefits of this new fibre technology in commercial markets,” said Paula Cogan, President of euNetworks. “From the initial 1km pilot, the teams have gone on to deploy hollowcore cable lengths of 7km and 14km on our network, as well as successfully blending hollowcore fibre with regular single mode fibre on this latest route. We continue to be focused on delivering the best possible bandwidth solutions for our customers and look forward to deploying longer routes with Lumenisity in the coming quarters. Leading the market in fibre-based ultra low latency services throughout Europe remains a key focus for euNetworks.”

“We are pleased to partner with euNetworks again, successfully deploying this new route and achieving this hollowcore cable link length”, said Tony Pearson, VP Sales & Marketing at Lumenisity. “We are excited to reach this milestone with euNetworks, and will continue to deliver a unique cable solution offering longer reach and lower latency for their customers.”

Comcast tests Lumenisity's hollowcore fiber

Wednesday, April 20, 2022  Comcast, Fiber, Hollowcore, Optical  

Comcast confirmed its first deployment of advanced hollowcore fiber optics.Comcast connected two locations in Philadelphia, which enables network engineers to continue to test and observe the performance and physical compatibility of hollowcore fiber in a real-world deployment. Comcast successfully tested bidirectional transmission (upstream and downstream traffic traveling on a single fiber), used coherent and direct-detect systems (allowing for...

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Lumenisity unveils Hollow Core Double Nested Fiber 

Thursday, March 10, 2022  Fiber, Lumenisity  

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Lumenisity unveils Hollow Core Double Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber

Lumenisity Limited, a start-up based in Romsey, United Kingdom, announced a new generation of hollowcore fibre with the lowest attenuation of any hollowcore fibre reported to date. The company says its new product surpasses the attenuation of conventional germanium-doped single-mode fibre (SMF) in the O and C bands. 

Specifically, Lumenisity’s new Hollow Core Double Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber (DNANF) achieves attenuations of <0.22 dB per km at 1310nm and <0.18 dB per km at 1550nm -- lowest loss ever recorded for any optical fibre in the O band and comparable or better than conventional single mode fibre in the C band. 

David Parker, Chairman at Lumenisity said, “We are very excited about this ground-breaking fibre development. We will now look to start shipping DNANF cabled solutions to customers in the second half of this year from our new, state-of-the-art hollowcore fibre manufacturing facility located in Romsey, UK; the first of its kind in the world.”

BT begins testing hollow core fibre

Tuesday, June 01, 2021  BT  

BT kicked off trials of hollow core fibre at the BT Labs in Adastral Park, Ipswich, in a collaborative project with Lumenisity, a Southampton University spin out company, and Mavenir.BT researchers are conducting the trials at BT’s research and engineering campus, using a 10-kilometre-long hollow core fibre cable provided by Lumenisity. The new fibre has a hollow, air filled centre that runs the entire length of the cable. It will be used to test...

READ MORE

euNetworks connects LSE with hollowcore fibre from Lumenisity

Thursday, April 15, 2021  Eunetworks, Hollowcore, Lumenisity, Start-Ups, UK  

Lumenisity Limited, a start-up based in Romsey, United Kingdom, supplied its ultra low latency CoreSmart cable solution based on "NANF" hollowcore fibres, to euNetworks Fiber UK. The fibre route connects an Interxion data center with the London Stock Exchange.Lumenisity Limited, which was formed in early 2017 as a spin out from the University of Southampton, said data travels 50% faster in hollowcore cable, reducing latency by 1/3, and providing...

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BT tests Quantum Key Distribution over hollow core fibre 

Monday, September 13, 2021  BT, Hollowcore, Quantum  

 BT has conducted a trial of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) over hollow core fibre cable developed by Lumenisity, a spin out from Southampton University.Testing of Nested Anti-Resonant Nodeless Fibre (NANF) hollow core fibre kicked off this summer at the BT Labs in Ipswich.BT researchers operated a state-of-the-art QKD system using commercial equipment over a 6-kilometre-long Lumenisity CoreSmart cable with a hollow, air-filled centre, revealing...

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euNetworks connects LSE with hollowcore fibre from Lumenisity

Lumenisity Limited, a start-up based in Romsey, United Kingdom, supplied its ultra low latency CoreSmart cable solution based on "NANF" hollowcore fibres, to euNetworks Fiber UK. The fibre route connects an Interxion data center with the London Stock Exchange.

Lumenisity Limited, which was formed in early 2017 as a spin out from the University of Southampton, said data travels 50% faster in hollowcore cable, reducing latency by 1/3, and providing a round trip saving of 3μs per km. These latency savings are very significant in financial trading applications. 

euNetworks offers a fibre-based, dedicated network platform supporting the bandwidth needs of the financial services community. 

“We’re very pleased to partner with euNetworks to enable them to provide the lowest latency performance to a major trading exchange using our CoreSmart cable,” said Tony Pearson, Business

Development Director at Lumenisity. “We are excited to be collaborating with such an established Carrier and to already have hollowcore deployed, carrying traffic as part of this development.”

“We continue to focus on delivering lowest latency services for our customers. We focus on identifying new and innovative technologies that can be deployed on our network to provide the best possible bandwidth solutions,” said Brady Rafuse, Chief Executive Officer of euNetworks. “We’re excited to be working with Lumenisity, helping to develop and deploy hollowcore fibre. We’re confident that with this technology we can achieve market leading fibre-based latencies much closer to radio frequency systems, without the constraints that are inherently present with those radio frequency solutions.”

https://lumenisity.com/

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