- “The subscriber experience is not fiber. The subscriber experience is Wi‑Fi," Broadband Forum's CEO told Fierce Network at Fiber Connect
- AI is part of a "jigsaw," not a standalone killer app
- Operators must fix data models and service layers before AI can deliver real value
AI was the topic thread that ran through most of the conversations and presentations at Fiber Connect in Orlando this year. It seems that AI has finally given purpose to years of fiber investment. Huzzah! But Craig Thomas, CEO of Broadband Forum, said the industry should approach that idea with caution because AI is not the be-all, end-all savior of the fiber industry.
“I think it is part of a jigsaw,” Thomas said. “But it doesn’t stand alone. It can’t stand alone.”
Anyone who's been in the industry for a while knows that it's spent years searching for a “killer app” to justify massive fiber builds. AI, with its explosive demand for compute and bandwidth, seems like the obvious answer.
But Thomas said service providers should continue to focus on the customer, not just on the network infrastructure. “The subscriber experience is not fiber. The subscriber experience is Wi‑Fi," he explained.
Indeed, when something breaks, customers don’t blame the fiber network — they blame Wi‑Fi, Thomas said, noting that this realization changes where operators need to focus investment and differentiation.
“There’s a lot of investment that has to happen before you launch an AI service,” Thomas said. AI may drive traffic and enable automation behind the scenes, but customers care about whether their applications work — streaming, gaming, remote work — without issue.
That led to his second point: defining what AI actually means for a telco. Each operator will have a different answer.
“Ask a small municipal operator versus an AT&T — it’s going to be totally different,” Thomas said. “Understanding how do I add value… is important. And AI is part of that.”
Where does AI show up?
Rather than a single application, AI shows up in stages, he said. It improves customer experience, optimizes network operations and, eventually, enables new services. But the true opportunity lies in understanding network intelligence and translating it into customer outcomes.
And that is next AI evolution — networks that understand applications in real time and adapt accordingly, he said.
Thomas explained, “You’ve now created a gaming session… AI will plot the right quality of experience dynamically across the network,” he said, describing a future where performance is updated automatically based on use case.
This evolution is less about AI as a product and more about AI as infrastructure, he said. “Maybe [AI] isn’t the killer app. But it’s the enabler.”
Finally, Thomas outlined the less glamorous but more important work required to get there. Before operators can deploy AI-driven services or autonomous networks, they need to fix issues, such as standardizing data models and ensuring they have interoperable management systems and modernized control planes.
“We’ve all bought networks today which weren’t necessarily designed for AI,” he said.
But how can operators evolve without ripping and replacing their existing infrastructure? That is a work in progress and of course, as CEO of the Broadband Forum, he said the answer lies in industry collaboration.
While AI may be injecting new energy into telecom, it's also showing how much groundwork is still left before operators can monetize it.