EXA Infrastructure: Pioneering Europe’s Largest G.652D Overbuild Program

EXA Infrastructure: Pioneering Europe’s Largest G.652D Overbuild Program

At EXA Infrastructure, we are proud to be delivering one of the most ambitious fibre enhancement programs in Europe. With an average of 200 cores of fibre per cable, EXA Infrastructure has committed to deploying over 2 million kilometers of new optical fibre. As the region’s largest  overpuller of backbone fibre, we’re strengthening key long-haul corridors with new G.652.D fibre — providing the performance, capacity, and scalability our customers require.

Why G.652D?

With thousands of kilometres already deployed — and many more underway across strategic corridors, our customers can benefit from Corning’s Ultra G.652D fibre, delivering ultra-low attenuation and outperforming legacy fibre in key performance metrics:

• Lower optical attenuation (0.18 dB per Km) → Increases Tbit/s per fibre pair, extends optical reach and reduces regeneration costs for DWDM equipment
• Full Extended C+L band compatibility → Unlocks terabit-scale capacity for future upgrades
• Industry-standard adoption → Ensures seamless integration with modern 400G and 800G coherent optics
• Longer span lengths → Reduces total cost of ownership

EXA Infrastructure’s Unrivaled Scale

We own and manage the largest independent fibre footprint (155,000+ km of fibre spanning 37+ countries). Unlike regional players, EXA’s continent-wide overbuild program delivers end-to-end G.652D consistency – critical for hyperscalers, carriers, and enterprises demanding predictable, high-performance infrastructure at scale.

Our pan-European backbone now includes thousands of kilometres of new G.652D cable across strategic corridors, such as:

• North-South Express: Linking Northern Europe to the Mediterranean
• East-West: Connecting key cities in Spain with Marseille, Italy, and Istanbul via ultra-low latency routes
• Transatlantic Gateways: Enhanced routes to key landing stations in both Northern and Southern Europe

Experience is Critical

Whilst on paper, G.652D fibre may provide better optical performance than older G.652x and G.655 fibre, in real life networks this is not always the case. The actual performance of fibre optic cable should not be judged solely by their initial specifications, because the methods of deployment and maintenance throughout the entire  life cycle are crucial factors affecting real-life performance. While the abundance of fiber in many countries might create the impression that all networks are installed and maintained to the same standard, this is not the case. Many consumer and incumbent networks are designed primarily for FTTH/CATV applications are built at the lowest possible costs resulting in suboptimal implementation:

• High quantity of splices due to multiple fibre drops to serve consumer business, compared to EXA’s typical 4km – 6km splice intervals.
• Poor splice loss thresholds (>0.2dB vs 0.06dB average for EXA network)
• Mid-span connectors and ODFs at POPs and street cabinets, compared to EXA’s fully fusion spliced spans between ILA cabins
• Excessive repairs due to shallow buried cables, resulting in excessive repair splices over the cable lifetime.
• Poor tolerance for return loss events (reflectance) caused by bad splices, mid-span connectors and use of non APC connectors.
• Micro-bending causing high attenuation at longer wavelengths due to poor cable installation practices, limiting the use of L-band technology.

These networks were never engineered to serve as critical backbone infrastructure. Excessive splice loss, macrobending and reflectance severely degrade optical performance and prevent the use of RAMAN amplifies in DWDM systems.

Fortunately, EXA’s dedicated fibre network is built specifically for long-haul performance and reliability. Even our older G.655 fibre significantly outperforms other poorly installed and maintained G.652D fibre in our competitor’s consumer FTTH networks.

! Key Takeaway:

To get ultimate network performance use low loss G.652D fibre and choose a network operator with the experience to correctly deploy and maintain backbone networks.

The Infrastructure Advantage

While competitors retrofit legacy networks, EXA is rebuilding Europe’s digital backbone from the ground up. Our G.652D deployment is not just an upgrade – it’s a multi-year architectural transformation! It includes future-proof design (deploying loose-tube cables with up to 432f counts with typical deployments being 216f to 288f, for easy capacity expansion) and allows seamless integration with EXA’s 400G/800G-ready wavelengths and cloud-edge nodes. This is how we are getting ready to support:

• AI/ML traffic patterns
• Next-gen DCI and GPU to GPU solutions
• Subsea-terrestrial convergence

Ready to Future-Proof Your Network?
Explore EXA’s G.652D roadmap and learn why we’re the infrastructure partner of choice for Europe’s most demanding connectivity projects:

View our infrastructure map here: https://exainfra.net/our-network/

EXA Infrastructure G.652D Map
Contact Our Dark Fibre Team

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