Broadband

Capgemini exec says dark fiber deployers are being judicious about their routes

By Linda Hardesty Aug 28, 2026 1:47pm

Fiber is expensive, so fiber deployers want to make sure it’s deployed where there will be AI demand
And power is a critical factor in the equation
Capgemini works with all the Tier 1 services providers and vendors to strategize their fiber builds for AI

There is a lot of long-haul and mid-haul fiber being deployed across the U.S. these days to meet the demand from AI data centers. And most of this is dark fiber, which means there are no electronics placed on the endpoints because this offers more flexibility for the future.

Arun Santhanam, EVP and business unit head for Telco, Media & Entertainment at Capgemini, said hyperscalers are being particularly judicious about where they lay fiber. This is because when service providers deployed fiber for the initial long-haul networks about 25 years ago, they sometimes over-deployed dark fiber in places that have never needed all the capacity.

These days, data centers are being built in places where there is available power. And often these are located where no one would have considered building massive fiber connections before.

“Now, because of power and AI data centers, fiber needs to be there,” said Santhanam. “So, where in the past maybe people would have never thought about some random land somewhere in Texas or in Louisiana, people are going to build.”

Fiber builders are calculating where fiber is going to be needed in the future. “So, there is a little bit of a betting,” he said.

Capgemini’s role

Capgemini is a consulting company and telecom integrator, similar to Accenture, Deloitte and Infosys.

“But ours is a pure services-oriented company,” said Santhanam. “I use the word ‘pure’ because we don't push any product. We focus purely on services as an integrated player.” The company employs more than 400,000 people, worldwide.

It works with big telecom companies such as Verizon, Comcast and T-Mobile, as well as vendors such as Cisco and Ericsson. It also works with big fiber players that may already have in-house expertise. “We don’t do the same thing for everybody,” he said. “We customize our offerings based on the specific needs of those customers. So, we work with all of them today, and we help them think through how to strategize this AI journey.”

He pointed out that AI is nothing without data centers and data centers are nothing without fiber connectivity.

Fierce recently wrote a story about hyperscalers putting clauses in their contracts with fiber builders to not create off-ramps to towns and cities as they pass those locations with fiber. Santhanam said that hyperscalers are not focused on serving towns and cities “because that is an extraordinarily different market space.”

“Yes, you can go from point A to point B with stopping at eight different places, but that means eight different failures. They’re going through straight shot as much as possible because when you do that, your reliability goes up higher and higher. So that there is a little bit of that balancing act of that happening that we hear.”

long-haul fiber Capgemini artificial intelligence (AI) dark fiber data centers Broadband