A long-distance DWDM lightwave transmission system operating in the 2000 nm wavelength region is proposed that is based on the utilization of hollow core fiber configured to exhibit low loss (e.g., on the order of 0.02 dB/km) in combination with a hybrid TDFA/HDFA repeater device. Multiple concatenated spans of the combination of the hollow core fiber and hybrid TDFA/HDFA repeater device are able to provide communication over path lengths in excess of 10,000 km without the need for electronic regeneration of the propagating signals. In one case, the hollow core fiber is configured as a double-nested anti-resonant nodeless fiber (DNANF) with the number of nested structures and their various parameters optimized to provide the low loss operation in the 2000 nm region.