Compared to copper-based networks, optical fiber reduces energy consumption by up to 54%, reduces operational costs due to lower maintenance requirements, and offers high-performance and high reliability that lasts a lifetime. Note that Recommendation ITU-T L. Less often talked about is the embodied carbon of optical fiber, which. Hundreds of millions of kilometers of optical fiber is installed throughout the world with an impressive history of mechanical reliability and optical performance. This paper summarizes some of the results of extended environmental aging studies of single mode silica glass optical fibers.