Tender prices for optical fibers and cables are accelerating their upward trend, while procurement bids for these products are repeatedly ending in failure. The outlook for the international optical fiber and cable market remains far from optimistic.
As demand within the optical fiber and cable industry gradually increases, industry prices are rising in tandem. Against this backdrop, centralized procurement initiatives by telecommunications operators have frequently resulted in failed bids or price hikes; for certain product categories, the maximum allowable bid price has even skyrocketed by 100% within a mere two months.
According to public records on China Telecom’s "Sunshine Procurement" website, a 2026 emergency procurement project for access cables initiated by China Telecom Chongqing failed to attract a single bidder during its first two rounds of tendering. The initial procurement attempt failed outright; a second attempt—conducted after raising the target price—also ended in failure. The procurement was finally concluded only after the maximum price ceiling was raised for a third time, ultimately settling at a price representing an increase of over 80% compared to the original estimate.
Notably, this project was designated as a "non-volume-specific" procurement, with an estimated pre-tax value of 1.75 million RMB. Consequently, although the unit price for the procurement has risen significantly, the corresponding actual purchase volume is expected to decrease.
Two emergency procurement projects initiated by China Telecom Guangdong—covering 2026 access cables and outdoor optical cables—have experienced a similarly turbulent trajectory. China Telecom Guangdong initially announced a suspension of these two projects, only to resume the procurement process toward the end of February. Subsequently, on March 5, the company declared the tenders a failure, citing the reason that "fewer than three bidders submitted their tender documents on time."
However, on March 12, China Telecom Guangdong issued a fresh announcement regarding the re-tendering of these emergency procurement projects for access cables and outdoor optical cables.
In reality, optical fiber prices had already begun a moderate upward climb in 2025; upon entering 2026, however, this upward trend shifted into an accelerated phase.
The primary driver behind this accelerated price growth is a fundamental reversal in the supply-demand dynamics of the optical fiber market. Tianfeng Securities points out that, on the supply side, the industry has spent several years undergoing a difficult process of capacity rationalization and consolidation. On the demand side, converging factors—such as the rapid construction of AI data centers—have created a synergistic effect, triggering a concentrated surge in demand across various types of optical fibers.
Analysts anticipate that the global optical fiber and cable market is poised to experience comprehensive growth throughout 2026. The North American market, in particular, is expected to emerge as one of the regions exhibiting the most significant growth in demand for optical fibers and cables, driven primarily by the accelerated build-out of AI data centers and fiber-optic broadband networks. As the training and inference of trillion-parameter large-scale models become routine, tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are accelerating the construction of GPU clusters; consequently, the demand for interconnectivity—both within and between data centers—is growing exponentially, directly driving a surge in the procurement of new types of optical fibers.
As the skyrocketing price of optical fibers has triggered a corresponding surge in the cost of optical cables, numerous cable manufacturers are now issuing quotes with a validity period of just three days. A daily fluctuation in pricing has become the new norm.
Numerous foreign trade firms and fiber optic cable manufacturers report that, regarding tenders and inquiries quoted prior to the New Year, they are now compelled to re-evaluate prices for clients one by one. The resulting discrepancies between the quoted figures and the clients' original budgets have become starkly apparent, leaving customers unable to proceed with their purchasing decisions.