Riding the wave — Delivering wavelength services in the era of rapid data center growth

AI is driving data center interconnect growth

The AI era is unleashing a new wave of data center interconnect growth. At a recent industry conference, a leading hyperscale operator revealed a striking internal metric: AI-related backbone traffic is growing at an astonishing 100% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). While projections vary among analysts and research firms, the consensus is clear: AI is reshaping infrastructure demands.

The future points to a surge in new data centers, escalating capacity requirements, and a growing need for low-latency, resilient connectivity to support increasingly distributed AI workloads. A recent Bell Labs Consulting study reinforces this trend, showing non-AI traffic growing at a CAGR of approximately 15%, while AI traffic — spanning both enterprise a