HFCL, a global technology enterprise and innovator in telecommunications and network infrastructure, has announced OptiQ AI, its integrated optical connectivity portfolio, for hyper-scalers, cloud providers and data centre operators in the United Kingdom.
The UK is Western Europe’s largest data centre market, with five AI Growth Zones designated across the Southeast, Northeast, North Wales, South Wales and Scotland to fast-track planning and grid access. As this build-out accelerates, optical connectivity is emerging as a critical delivery priority alongside power and grid planning.
A less-discussed constraint sits beneath compute and power: fibre density. Moving data between GPUs, servers, storage and switches at scale requires optical infrastructure built for higher bandwidth and density, while letting operators deploy, maintain and upgrade networks quickly. OptiQ AI brand addresses this by bringing HFCL’s established optical fibre and connectivity capabilities, IBR cables, fibre assemblies, patch cords, pigtails, trunks, cassettes and enclosure panels under one integrated framework, built around five attributes: High Quality, Quantum Bandwidth, Densely Quantified, Quick Rollout and Q-Class Uptime.
Together, these five pillars form a complete optical ecosystem purpose-built for AI, cloud and hyperscale environments, helping operators mitigate interoperability challenges across large-scale builds.
Harsh Pagay, Executive President, HFCL, said: “GPUs often dominate the AI infrastructure conversation compute capacity and power. But none of that can deliver at scale without an optical network capable of moving enormous volumes of data quickly and reliably. Our focus with OptiQ AI is to help hyper-scalers and data centre operators address the practical realities of AI deployment, from fibre density and bandwidth to deployment speed, network reliability and future upgrades.”
With OptiQ AI, HFCL is positioning optical connectivity as a foundational layer of UK AI infrastructure, rather than a secondary consideration to compute and power.
