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Telecom leaders increasingly cite the country's AI future as reason to advance policies that support and speed up fiber deployments, while analysts are also keeping eyes on Starlink's 'fiber-like reliability.'
As the business world pursues its fixation with putting AI everywhere, telecom industry professionals continue to emphasize the role fiber networks are playing in supporting that evolution.
They're also using it as a point of distinction, as competition for funding and customers creeps further in from low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite and fixed wireless access (FWA) providers.
"America's AI future and the future of our entire innovation economy runs through fiber broadband networks. Not alongside them. Not around them. Through them," USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Intelligent Networks in July.
"Fiber is the foundation on which all next-generation connectivity depends," Spalter added. "This includes satellite and wireless, which rely on fiber to move the massive amounts of AI-fueled data that help deliver the real-world benefits of the innovation emerging all around us – to communities throughout our nation."
That close relationship between AI use and fiber networks shows up in research. According to Roger Entner, Analyst and Founder of Recon Analytics, fiber users are more likely to engage with AI.
"People who have fiber do more intense sessions with AI, and the people who do more intense sessions are moving towards fiber," Entner said during a webinar with Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) CEO Gary Bolton last week. Entner's analytics firm Recon surveys 6,000 people weekly on AI use.
"The demand that AI is putting on networks is dramatic, and it also changes the way we use the networks," added Entner. "If we go a couple of years back ... between 95 and 93% of the network traffic was download and 7% was upload. With AI, this is shifting significantly into the teens, if not higher," he said.
Entner also emphasized the demand AI use is placing on data centers, noting that "metro networks are being significantly upgraded" to handle the increase in data consumption, with some aiming for terabit connections. "It is insane," he said.
With that demand to grow further, and with government and business officials alike aligned on the need to support AI's insatiable appetite for data, broadband professionals are increasingly citing the country's AI future as reason to advance policies that support and speed up fiber deployments.
Testifying to the Senate subcommittee last month, USTelecom's Spalter emphasized the symbiotic relationship between fiber and AI to encourage lawmakers to pass a series of bills reforming broadband permitting processes, a longtime goal of the telecom industry.
Those bills cited by Spalter include the Close the Gaps Act, which aims at reducing permitting bottlenecks on federal lands; the Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act, to address permitting holdups at rail crossings; and the Accelerating Broadband Permits Act, which seeks to cut duplicative agency reviews.
"The primary constraint on America's AI infrastructure is not technological. It is governmental. Permitting is the single largest roadblock to delivering AI-ready connectivity in every community, and it is squarely within Congress's power to address this year," said Spalter in opening testimony.
"Fixed and mobile wireless and satellite serve real and important purposes – reaching the hardest-to-reach geographic areas, backfilling aging copper, connecting ships and aircraft, restoring service in the aftermath of a disaster. But fiber is the infrastructure foundation for our AI future," he added.
Industry groups also recently emphasized the role fiber networks will play in supporting AI growth in comments to the FCC's open proceeding on modernizing the High-Cost program under the Universal Service Fund (USF), which provides billions in subsidies for rural broadband deployments and network maintenance each year. That proceeding remains open for reply comments through September 3.
"The burgeoning growth of AI further warrants assurances that rural areas will be served reliably," said NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association in an FCC filing. "Without modern networks, AI growth will falter and the United States risks falling behind adversarial nations trying to catch up. Or, the vast majority of America will be left behind, harming competitiveness domestically and internationally."
While there is currently broad agreement that fiber networks are essential for meeting AI's demands, Recon Analytics' Entner says his firm will also be looking more into the impact that SpaceX's Starlink is having on AI consumption. "One of the scary things for fiber providers is that we can see very clearly in our data that Starlink has now, from a customer perception, fiber-like reliability," Entner told FBA's Bolton, crediting Starlink's "phenomenal router" for delivering that experience.
To that end, he said fiber companies need to remain "diligent" and understand they "haven't won" this race just yet, despite the current benefits fiber networks afford AI users.
"Fiber providers need to keep working on improving the technology, providing an excellent service at a reasonable cost. Because if they don't, there are others who are willing to take your customers' money," said Entner.