Susana SchwartzCorning, AT&T to expand fiber to meet exploding data demand
Below in “Top Stories,” my colleague James Blackman looks at the AT&T and Corning $3 billion deal – a major commitment to expand high-speed fiber internet to 60 million U.S. locations by the end of 2030. Though it primarily targets residential and business broadband expansion, it will also affect the broader data center ecosystem by accommodating AI-application driven surges in upstream consumer data traffic. According to AT&T, “The average AT&T Fiber household now uses more than 1 terabyte each month for streaming, gaming, video calls, cloud services and AI. The company expects monthly use to reach 2 to 2.5 terabytes by 2030.
Having symmetrical upstream capacity to handle AI-driven data uploads and a guaranteed preferential volume supply chain amid tight global optical markets make the AT&T and Corning deal an interesting one – especially as AI data center construction continues to strain global optical supply chains.
Check it out, below.
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
AT&T-Corning deal: AT&T has signed a $3B-plus fiber supply deal with Corning, building a ready supply of fiber and cable to expand its network to households at a time when AI infrastructure build-outs are putting pressure on optical supply chains.
Samsung, KT, SKT collaboration: Samsung has signed AI-RAN contracts with KT and SK Telecom for Korea’s Hyper AI Network,a 2-year initiative to test whether private 5G networks and edge AI can support robots doing real industrial work.
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Constellation, Amazon nuclear PPA: The companies’ 20-year power PPA will support the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in MD, including a $3B for 190 MWs of capacity. Also included was a retail supply agreement with PJM power market.
CoreWeave delivers NVL72: CoreWeave announced Cognition as the 1st customer with production workloads on NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72-running training, reinforcement learning and production inference for Devin on CoreWeave.
9.4GW SMR in Utah: Valar Atomics will develop a campus of data centers and about 456 SMRs, along with a facility to produce nuclear fuel and others for storing nuclear waste. Project Beehive will be built on 9,000 acres of BLM land in Utah.
Snyopsys-Amazon deal: Synopsys announced an agreement in which Amazon will expand its use of Synopsys’ IP, including application-optimized silicon IP and Synopsys EDA, simulation and analysis (S&A), and agentic AI technologies.
Infineon Bangkok facility: German chipmaker Infineon opened a $1.4B facility near Bangkok. The backend manufacturing site will process chips into finished and tested semiconductors, with an initial investment of more than €100 million ($114M)
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