Yes, that would commonly be called circular wavegguide. The issue with using waveguide is that it is very expensive to run over distances. WR-75 flexible waveguide, for instance, costs roughly $1k/ft.
Microwave is traditionally used to reduce latency caused by fiber’s refractive index. I suppose you could bury waveguides, but an air interface works just as well (besides the occasional weather; better to be fast most of the time).
I can assure you, that link already exists several times over. There are dozens of links between Aurora and 350 E Cermak, and dozens more between 350 E Cermak and Cateret, NJ. There's even an entire ISP based off the lowest latency link between Chicago and New York.
What's in Aurora? And why West Chicago in the original article?
Amusingly, I grew up 2 towns over from Aurora and live 3 towns from Carteret now.
The CME datacenter is in Aurora, and the ICE datacenter is in Chicago proper.
Ah, cool. Is there a significant operation in West Chicago, too? From the article, I was still confused by why a shortwave tower would be located there. West Chicago is close to Aurora, I suppose, but if it's for CME data center, why not put the tower in Aurora?
Heh, that became very confusing. The post I replied to was edited at some point asking why there isn’t a direct microwave link down I-88 in Chicago. Sorry about that :)
Not with anywhere nearly as good as the 0.28db/km attenuation achieved on modern singlemode 9/125 fiber.
Or a much thicker fiber with conductive coating while sending microwaves through it? Shorter microwaves should be transmissible via a few mm wide conductive pipe.