India, Sept. 16 -- Inside a high-frequency trading floor, where nanoseconds delineate gain from loss, or across the fortified corridors of a command network, data must traverse vast distances swiftly and securely. Across much of the world, single-mode silica fibre has long served as the physical backbone of high-speed networks-a marvel in its time, but one now brushing against its physical limits.

The world now has its new contender: hollow-core fibre (HCF), which guides light not through glass, but through air.

Developed by researchers at the University of Southampton and also by Microsoft, the latest evolution-nested antiresonant nodeless fibre (DNANF)-has achieved a record-low attenuation of 0.091 dB/km at 1,550 nm. This surpasses th...