BROADBAND NATION EXPO, ORLANDO, FLORIDA – Over 100 ISPs from across the United States, vendors in the broadband ecosystem, organizations and more gathered in Orlando for Fierce Networks and the TIA’s annual Broadband Nation Expo to talk about the challenges of delivering broadband today.
In years past, much of the event discussion focused on Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD), but with the industry reeling from BEAD delays and changes, the connectivity experience, preparing for AI data centers and how the comms network can transform lives and economies took center stage.
David Eckard, head of strategy, Fixed Networks, at Nokia, summed up the transformation in the industry and at BBNE quite nicely with a simple quote that exemplified the current center of attention when it comes to connectivity today: “Data centers are popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.”
Fiber for breakfast
To grasp how much attention is focused on data centers and AI, we stopped in at a breakfast session on advanced fiber technologies. During the breakfast, Dr. Dong Hao, market technology development manager, Optical Communications at Corning, told the crowd about Meta’s 1 million GPU data center campus in Louisiana.
“It’s so gigantic that it’s going to consume 8 million miles of optical fiber in that data center, alone,” he said. “How do you manufacture that? We are dealing with the capacity crunch. It’s a high-priority issue.”
Let that sink in: 8 million miles of fiber.
Wanted more than ever: Fiber splicers
With the data center boom, fiber is even more of a hot commodity. However, the workforce gap is still a thing – and getting people interested in fiber splicing is difficult so some broadband companies are trying new tactics to bring in talent.
“We demystify the work because some people say, I have no idea how I can splice something the size of a human hair,” said Randall Covard, SVP, legal and people operations, at Summit Broadband.
“We actually do fiber splicing demonstrations in high schools and community colleges,” he said. “The college kids love VR goggles. We have VR goggles where they can go virtually and see how a fiber is broken, how it is spliced, cleaned, repaired and obviously the light continues to go through.”
Fiber splicing on the go
SMG Trailers brought a customized fiber splicing trailer to the show and we got a little tour. The trailer lets splicers work in a controlled environment, as fiber can be pulled in through little doors on the side of the trailer. A bucket on the top makes it easy to attach the fiber to poles after it’s been spliced.
Smart networks
Sure, faster networks are important, but in the age of AI, “It’s about getting smarter networks, not just faster networks,” Jeff Brown, senior director, Segment Marketing, Calix, said during a panel on access technologies.
Robin Olds, senior business development manager, Broadband Program Office, Americas Service Provider, from Cisco, noted that service providers are getting more comfortable with AI in the network, given rising costs. “Trusting the networks to make changes on the fly – that is a really hard thing for humans to do, but providers are starting to look at that to save time and money.”
Popular tchotchkes
Every conference has its tchotchkes, and Broadband Nation is no different. This year, small stuffed animals that doubled as screen cleaners were hot commodities in the expo hall. Bonus - they worked really well. We tested them.
Catch all of Fierce Network's coverage from Broadband Nation Expo this week right here.