Capacity and Market
Modern fiber cables can contain up to a thousand fibers in a single cable, with potential bandwidth in the terabytes per second. It is estimated that no more than 1% of the optical fiber buried in recent years is actually "lit". Companies can lease or sell the unused fiber to other providers who are looking for service in or through an area. Many companies are "overbuilding" their networks for the specific purpose of having a large network of dark fiber for sale, reducing the overall need for trenching and municipal permitting.
In recent years the cost of small fiber-count pole-mounted cables has greatly decreased due to the high Japanese and South Korean demand for fiber to the home (FTTH) installations.
Read more about this topic: Optical Fiber Cable
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