Telecoms infrastructure company McKay Brothers has signed a partnership with Relativity Networks to develop and expand hollow core fiber networks for financial services and growing compute demand.

The partnership will initially focus on supporting key financial market locations in New Jersey, with expansion into other markets.

Florida-based Relativity Networks specializes in hollow core fiber (HCF) development.

HCF is seen as a potentially transformational upgrade from traditional fiber due to its design. HCF features an air-filled center channel that is surrounded by a ring of glass tubes, akin to a honeycomb pattern. This allows for higher capacity with minimized chromatic dispersion, while light is able to travel significantly faster.

The technology is not expected to replace conventional fiber, but rather be used along some of the most performance-critical routes, such as between hyperscaler and neoscaler AI infrastructure locations, between data centers, or between AI training and inference clusters, between cloud regions, financial trading locations, major network hubs, and for ultra-low-latency enterprise applications.

In this instance, the goal is to support the financial services market.

The company has been developing its ChronoCore hollow core fiber, which has been used by the likes of Colt Technology Services, with McKay becoming the latest company to purchase the technology.

Relativity claims that its ChronoCore HCF cable enables data to travel roughly 47 percent faster than through conventional glass fiber, dramatically reducing network latency.

McKay will use the technology to support the company's plans to offer dedicated dark-fiber-pair indefeasible rights of use (IRUs), alongside managed connectivity services ranging from 10Gbps to 400Gbps.

"We have worked with successive generations of hollow core fiber for nearly a decade. Relativity offers the best technical solution we have evaluated for the networks we want to build," said Tim Boyle, chief operating officer, McKay Brothers. "For critical US market infrastructure, IP provenance and security of supply matter alongside performance. Relativity's strong US patent portfolio and roadmap, enabled by Prysmian's proprietary fiber and cable production, give us the confidence to invest for the long term. New Jersey is just the start."

Relativity's ChronoCore HCF is produced at Prysmian's facility in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and cabled at Prysmian's plant in Claremont, North Carolina. Couplers, fiber characterization, and installation training are performed in Orlando, Florida.

The company has been working closely with Italian optical cable manufacturer Prysmian, with both companies claiming in July to have produced their highest-density HCF cable to date.

"McKay brings nearly a decade of experience putting hollow core fiber to work in demanding environments, from data centers and outside plant to towers and integrated fiber-wireless networks," added Jason Eichenholz, founder and CEO of Relativity Networks.

"That experience spans the routes and real estate needed to build and operate networks. That makes McKay the right partner to develop this opportunity with us and serve the growing infrastructure needs of AI inference. McKay's partnership and purchase mark an important commercial milestone for Relativity and provide a foundation for expanding financial-market networks and advancing the network infrastructure of the AI economy together."