Building Future-Proof Networks to Meet Increasing Demand

I assume that most people know the famous line from Field of Dreams where the disembodied voice promises, “Build it, and he will come.” For twenty years, I’ve been advising broadband clients against taking that advice. It doesn’t make any sense to invest a lot of money into building a broadband network without first having done enough market research to know that people will buy your services. Now, I want to talk about a similar-sounding idea – build it, and they will fill it. This is a shorthand way to describe the unbelievable growth in broadband demand. I’m now warning clients to build new networks that are robust enough to handle the future demand that will inevitably be coming from customers. If you build a fiber network, your customers will fill it. When it gets too busy you can upgrade electronics and start the growth cycle all over again.

[Doug Dawson is President of CCG Consulting.]