Microsoft shows that this is the best time to acquire new companies

Microsoft announced its plans for acquiring Lumenisity, a UK-based startup that focuses on developing hollowcore fibre (HCF) optic solutions primarily for data centres and ISPs. In practice, it means that the company is developing high-speed cables for transferring data. 

Further details of the acquisition haven’t been announced yet, therefore the timeline and price remain a mystery, however, Microsoft has disclosed that this purchase is intended to significantly expand the company’s capacity in global cloud infrastructure, significantly improving issues related to latency and security. 

While HCF cable technology has been around for almost 30 years, the novelty introduced by Lumenisity lies in filling the hollowed middle with air and surrounding it with glass tubes.

According to Lumenisity, this technology makes use of the fact that light travels faster in air. Therefore, Lumenisity’s hollowcore fibre based optical cable, allows the data to travel 50% faster than in traditional solid core fibre which results in a 30% reduction in latency between nodes, data centres or exchanges. This increased speed also translates into what the company estimates to be a 1000x reduction in power induced non-linear effects and broad spectral bandwidth. 

In April, Lumenisity, in cooperation with Comcast, carried out a test run of its new cables and according to the results of the trial, Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.