Apparently some test plants have been on station since 2022[0], I interpret the report to be they are still working on ways to get it to operate meaningfully with sufficiently little babysitting.
Thing is, If they want to manufacture tens of thousands of kilometers of fiberoptic, they're probably gonna need something at a scale bigger than can be done on the ISS.
Which in turn means they will need to launch their own manufacturing spacecraft which is fully autonomous.
