Disclosed are cost-effective, compact, optically pumped, high gain, rare earth polymer materials such as, erbium (Er.sup.3+) perfluoro polymers, optical fibers made from the materials and waveguide amplifiers made from the materials having low-loss at telecommunications wavelengths for operation in communications network systems. The polymer amplifier is based on the use of novel high performance rare earth (RE) polymer materials. The new discovered highly transparent RE polymer materials are directly synthesized at high RE ion concentrations (.about.10.sup.20- 10.sup.21 rare earth ion/cm.sup.3.about.10% wt) with each metal ion encapsulated and physically buffered by insulating, covalently bonded, perfluorinated phosphate ligands that then form the high temperature stable, polymer backbone matrix. This is distinctly different from widely studied inorganic glasses and single crystals where RE ion salts are doped directly into the host but only to relatively low levels (<0.1% wt).