Industry News: G.652.D Fiber Sees Sustained Tight Supply, Prices Hit Seven-Year High

As the core universal transmission medium for global communication networks, G.652.D single-mode fiber has hit a pivotal industry inflection point recently, marking a historic reversal in its market supply-demand dynamics. Sustained price surges and tight spot supply have become the dominant industry trend, positioning it as a high-profile core segment in the optical communication sector.

G.652.D is a low-water-peak non-dispersion shifted single-mode fiber compliant with ITU-T standards. Thanks to its full-wavelength compatibility, low transmission loss, high splicing stability and exceptional cost-effectiveness, it has long dominated the single-mode fiber market, accounting for over 90% of domestic demand in China and more than 70% of global demand. Widely applied in backbone networks, metropolitan area networks, FTTH gigabit access, 5G base station backhaul and conventional data center interconnection, it serves as the "fundamental artery" of digital infrastructure.

Since the start of 2026, the G.652.D fiber market has entered a high-prosperity cycle with simultaneous volume and price growth. Data shows that the product price has jumped sharply from a decade-low of 18-20 RMB per fiber-kilometer in Q2 2025 to 50-70 RMB per fiber-kilometer in March 2026, with some spot prices exceeding 80 RMB. The cumulative annual increase has topped 150%, hitting a seven-year high. The pricing mechanism has also shifted from being dominated by telecom operator centralized procurement to spot market pricing, greatly boosting price flexibility.

What Factors are Driving the Upsurge in G652D Fiber Prices?

This round of market boom is driven by dual supply-demand forces. On the demand side, the explosive growth of AI computing infrastructure is the core incremental driver, as intelligent computing centers consume3-10 times more fiber than traditional data centers. Coupled with the in-depth construction of China's "East Data, West Computing" project and gigabit optical networks, as well as capacity expansion by North American cloud vendors and the implementation of the U.S. BEAD broadband plan overseas, global demand for G.652.D fiber keeps climbing. Global total demand is projected to reach 577 million fiber-kilometers in 2026, up 12% year on year.

On the supply side, a rigid shortage persists. Optical preform, the core bottleneck of the industrial chain (accounting for 70% of fiber production costs), has a long expansion cycle of 1.5 to 2 years. Manufacturers adopted cautious expansion strategies during the previous industry downturn, and the global optical preform capacity utilization rate now exceeds 89%, with leading enterprises running at full capacity. Meanwhile, manufacturers prioritize capacity allocation to high-margin specialty fibers such as G.657.A2 and G.654.E, further squeezing G.652.D effective supply. Global effective supply will reach only 397 million fiber-kilometers in 2026, with a year-on-year growth rate of less than 3%, leaving a global supply-demand gap of 180 million fiber-kilometers (a gap rate of 16.4%), with China accounting for over 65% of the global gap.

In terms of industry landscape, the global G.652.D fiber market is highly concentrated with a CR4 of nearly 60%, while China's domestic market posts a CR5 of 80%. Leading firms including YOFC, Hengtong and ZTT hold supply dominance thanks to fully independent optical preform production capacity. Small and medium-sized manufacturers, relying on imported optical preforms and facing high costs, have seen continuous weakening of competitiveness, further lifting industry concentration.

Industry insiders noted that optical preform capacity cannot be ramped up quickly in the short term, so the tight supply of G.652.D fiber will last until the end of 2027, with prices expected to stay at high levels. In the medium term, as new capacity comes online, the market will gradually return to supply-demand equilibrium, and products will be upgraded to low-loss and ultra-low-loss versions to adapt to higher-speed transmission needs. As the underlying support of the digital economy, the prosperity of the G.652.D fiber industry will directly shape the progress of global computing power networks and broadband infrastructure construction.