Mitch Carrel: Dark Fiber's 3 Barriers of Land Use, Engineering, and Sales
Dark fiber's economics are compelling in the AI era, but projects stall because operators treat land use, engineering, and sales as sequential hurdles rather than tackling all three at once.
In an era defined by explosive growth in AI, data centers and cloud infrastructure, dark fiber offers immense potential to expand network capacity—but persistent barriers continue to limit its widespread deployment. Dark fiber, or unlit fiber, consists of unused optical fiber cables that can be leased or purchased to provide private, high-capacity networks that are especially attractive for large enterprises and hyperscalers.
Dark fiber infrastructure is in the middle of a generational investment cycle. The global market reached an estimated $7.93 billion in 2025, growing at a 14.1% compound annual rate toward a projected $15.39 billion by 2030. AI-driven data center interconnect demand is accelerating that timeline.
A Cisco-commissioned research shows that dark fiber delivers up to 48% total cost-of-ownership savings over traditional carrier ethernet at 400G bandwidth in metro networks, 61% savings in short-haul networks, and 46% savings in long-haul networks.
The capital is available. The demand is real. So why do so many dark fiber projects still stall?
In my experience, the answer lies in three co-equal barriers that are rarely addressed together: land use, engineering, and sales. Most operators treat them as sequential. The successful ones treat them as simultaneous.
The enterprise imperative
These economics are not reserved for hyperscalers. Any enterprise whose bandwidth consumption exceeds 100G—manufacturers running real-time IoT networks, healthcare systems transmitting terabytes of imaging data, financial institutions requiring ultra-low-latency execution — is almost certainly overpaying for carrier-managed circuits.
Carrier pricing scales with bandwidth, while dark fiber costs are essentially flat. Once an enterprise controls the fiber, it can scale without per‑gigabit fees—making dark fiber the logical solution for enterprises operating beyond 100G.
Land use: Discretionary, ministerial, and everything in between
Every route mile of dark fiber requires governmental approvals, but not all approvals are created equal. Some are ministerial: straightforward right-of-way permits governed by established standards and timelines. Others are discretionary: zoning reviews, resource sharing agreements, or franchise negotiations where local authorities exercise judgment and, often, leverage.
The distinction matters enormously: ministerial approvals in a jurisdiction with clear fee schedules and a digital permitting platform can move more quickly, while discretionary approvals in a jurisdiction with fragmented workflows and opaque standards can add months or years—and millions in cost.
The FCC has taken notice. In late 2025, the Commission opened WC Docket No. 25-253, its most comprehensive proceeding since the 2018 small-cell orders, inquiring into state and local permitting practices that effectively prohibit deployment. In June 2026, the FCC circulated a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) as a part of its tentative agenda for the month’s meeting. The NPRM proposes and seeks comment on ways the FCC can speed permit approvals, cap fees, prevent added local restrictions, and clarify its authority over wireline deployment. Although still in the early stages of the rulemaking process, adoption of this notice marks a significant step toward greater certainty in dark fiber deployment.
For operators, the strategic imperative is to map every jurisdiction on a proposed route before engineering begins, classify each approval as discretionary or ministerial, and build a timeline that accounts for the slowest and potentially problematic links in the chain.
Engineering and private opportunities: License before you build
This is where experienced practitioners can create significant value, saving clients years and tens of millions of dollars. Before committing to new construction, operators should exhaust every opportunity to license existing infrastructure. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established a framework requiring incumbent carriers to afford access to ducts, conduits, and rights-of-way to competing telecommunications providers on just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.
Licensing existing conduit or dark fiber can avoid excavation, permitting, and restoration—cutting deployment from years to months and costs dramatically. Yet many operators still default to self-build before checking availability.
Sales: The barrier nobody talks about
A fiber route without committed customers risks becoming a stranded asset. Yet commercial strategy—securing anchor customers, structuring IRUs and leases, and obtaining letters of intent—is too often an afterthought, driven by an “if you build it, they will come” mindset.
Disciplined operators integrate sales into route design from day one, aligning engineering with demand instead of building speculatively. The best opportunities often start with a single committed customer and a plan to deliberately overbuild to capture added revenue from other fiber or conduit users.
The practitioners who win
Successful dark fiber projects start with early integration of land use counsel, engineers, and commercial teams. When siloed, delays and risks multiply; when aligned, timelines compress and capital is deployed more efficiently.
Dark fiber is the foundational infrastructure for the AI economy. Building it demands more than engineering. It demands strategy.
Kathleen McKenna, a summer associate at Smith Gambrell Russell, contributed to this article.
Mitchell A. Carrel is a nationally recognized land use and zoning attorney who advises public and private companies, developers, investors, and infrastructure sponsors on the siting, entitlement, and development of complex, high impact projects—particularly in the digital infrastructure sector, including data centers and underground fiber optic networks, as well as transportation, logistics, and iconic high rise developments in Chicago and other major U.S. markets. He regularly serves as the lead “quarterback” for entitlement and governmental approval strategies on nationally scaled digital infrastructure projects, guiding clients through multi-jurisdictional zoning, land use, and regulatory frameworks. He seamlessly coordinates with local counsel and stakeholder teams across the country, providing clients with a single, centralized point of leadership for complex, multi market approval strategies. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.
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