The surge in AI and cloud advancements is fueling heightened demand for wave services, especially as hyperscale data centres are projected to experience significant growth through the end of 2025.

Ciena has published new research delving into the factors driving demand for wavelength services, offering the first in-depth assessment of this evolving market segment.

The study highlights the pivotal function of wave services in supporting the proliferation of interconnected data centres powered by AI, underscores the increasing need for low latency and data sovereignty in AI-driven workloads and explores the expansion of both terrestrial and essential submarine network infrastructure.

It aims to emphasise how critical managed optical fibre network (MOFN) business models are to expand high-speed connectivity into new geographies and markets.

“As cloud providers scale data centre networks to address AI performance requirements, wave services must also evolve in terms of capacity, coverage, latency and route diversity,” says Mark Bieberich, Vice President of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena.

Hyperscaler growth fuels connectivity revolution

The US wave services circuits market expanded by nearly 8% in 2024 and is forecast to maintain steady growth through 2029, according to research from Vertical Systems Group.

The study highlights a rising adoption of wave services for cloud on-ramps, evidenced by the metro geographical focus (41%) and the predominance of retail customers (58%).

Additionally, the report projects that between 2024 and 2029, demand for 400G circuits will accelerate sharply, 100G circuits will continue to grow steadily and 10G circuits will see only modest gains.

Mark explains: “Demand for wave services is growing steadily worldwide, as data centre network expansion requires increasingly high-capacity interconnection among various types of network operators and end users.”

Wave services underpin high-capacity networks, serving as a critical enabler for connectivity to and between data centres.

Designed to deliver high bandwidth, protocol transparency and low latency, these services can function as standalone offerings or as the foundation for higher-layer services.

Leveraging Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, wave services facilitate enormous data-transmission capacity across a single fibre pair.

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