A 1.55 μm band dispersion shifted optical fiber is provided which has a low loss and low dispersion slope. A core region “a” is heavily doped with GeO2 . A core region “b” is composed of pure SiO2 glass. A cladding section is arranged around the core region. The cladding section has a lot of holes extending in the longitudinal direction of the optical fiber. The holes of the cladding section are not located at random, but have a honeycomb structure composed of regular hexagons which have a side length of Λ, and serve as a primitive lattice. The center of the core section has a region having a refractive index higher than that of the periphery of the core section. The core section has the refractive index distribution in which the group velocity dispersion at the operation wavelength of the region becomes the normal dispersion.