This article discusses the fundamentals of optical fiber transmission technology and its basic building blocks. It aims to explain the principal characteristics of optical fibers, such as chromatic dispersion, of optical‐fiber amplifiers, including the noise they generate, and of semiconductor lasers. Also included is a discussion of optical receivers and their sensitivities, of nonlinear phenomena in optical‐fibers, of solitons, and of various transmission network architectures such as passive optical networks (PONs).