What is Dark Fibre?
Also known as: Unlit Fibre
A dark or unlit fibre refers to a spare piece of network fibre that is in the ground. Digging fibre optic network routes is a huge investment so cables are often laid with significant additional capacity that can be leased to companies in the future. The customer is responsible for providing the necessary equipment and expertise to do this. As IT continues to converge on the data centre and bandwidth requirements increase, the demands on your network continue to grow. To meet this demand, many organisations are now choosing to integrate Dark Fibre into their network topology. A Dark Fibre network provides reliable and secure optical infrastructure to enable you to self-manage critical elements of your network. Dark Fibre provides your business with maximum levels of flexibility and control to support virtually unlimited bandwidth increases – at a time and pace to suit you.
As demand increases for fibre to support mobile backhaul (MBH) of 5G mobile services, our metro area fibre networks are densifying to meet this demand.
Fibre will be a core supporting infrastructure within 5G networks, and network densification will be critically important to support a massive increase in demand for fibre connectivity driven by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) as 5G services begin to roll-out.
Why choose a Dark Fibre connection?
As IT continues to converge on the data centre and bandwidth requirements increase, the demands on your network continue to grow. To meet this demand, many organisations are now choosing to integrate Dark Fibre into their network topology.
A Dark Fibre network provides reliable and secure optical infrastructure to enable you to self-manage critical elements of your network. Dark Fibre provides your business with maximum levels of flexibility and control to support virtually unlimited bandwidth increases – at a time and pace to suit you.
Recommended content for you
Colt completes world-first transatlantic quantum-safe encryption trial
Colt announces new sales leadership appointments
Colt expands Asia-Pacific alternative trading access with Nextrade partnership in Korea
Colt Forecasts 2026 CIO technology priorities with AI for the Inference Era, Naas 2.0 and quantum-ready security expected to dominate the CIO agenda
Esade supports its critical services with Colt’s connectivity solutions
