Network management

Lumen Technologies has launched Lumen Intelligent Internet, which lets its enterprise customers buy connectivity in minutes and scale bandwidth up or down as their AI, cloud, and business needs demand.

America’s broadband providers invested $92.6 billion in U.S. communications infrastructure in 2025—up 3.4% from 2024 and the third-highest annual total since 2002. Cumulative investment now approaches $2.3 trillion since 1996 as consumer and business demand for faster, more sophisticated networks grows. In 2025, broadband providers pushed fiber deeper into more communities, expanding modern networks to meet demand that is growing in scale and changing in character. Average monthly broadband usage reached 767.4 gigabytes per subscriber by year’s end, up 9.9% from 2024.

In a recent request filed with the FCC, Starlink asked to increase the size of its broadband satellite fleet to 100,000. This coincided with the FCC’s announcement that it wants to ease the process for approving new satellites, so I have to think the idea will sail through. There was one extraordinary statement in this filing that is the topic of today’s blog. SpaceX said it has the goal of handling the majority of the world’s Internet traffic. Elon Musk has always been one for huge hyperbole, so statements like this are not surprising.

What happens when powerful technology becomes accessible to smaller broadband providers? Ian Oliver of Globema discusses the software, automation, and AI tools helping tier-two and tier-three internet service providers work smarter, design networks faster, and better serve their customers.

For 30 years, network traffic followed a rhythm you could set a clock by. A lull in the morning, a peak through the business day, demand falling off in the evening. And it flowed overwhelmingly in one direction: down, toward users pulling web pages, video, and files. Networks were engineered around both assumptions. AI is breaking them. For example, MetTel has seen double-digit traffic growth for eight to nine years, but lately the shape of that traffic has changed. The familiar daily curve is leveling out.

Most rural broadband providers expect AI to change how they operate, even as the majority remain in the early stages of using it, according to Telecompetitor’s 2026 Rural Broadband State of AI study. Of the 132 providers surveyed, 91 percent said they anticipate a significant impact on both their own companies and the wider industry. That expectation has not yet translated into deep adoption, and the findings suggest that many providers are not as far behind as they might feel.

The private equity firm Grain Management is combining two of its fiber operators—Ritter Communications and Great Plains Communications—into one entity called Rightfiber. Heath Simpson, currently CEO of Ritter Communications, will serve as CEO of Rightfiber, and Todd Foje, currently CEO of Great Plains Communications, will serve as executive chairman. Foje said that the reasoning behind the combination is that there are advantages to scale.

Verizon is ready to take network automation to the next level with agentic AI and is starting to see promising results from agents taking on some operational tasks. From its early learnings, the carrier urges the industry to focus on security, transparency, and, where it makes sense, a common framework for agentic network operations. The foundation for the carrier's automation capabilities is the on-premise Verizon Cloud Platform that hosts virtual and cloud-native network functions.

In May, Verizon’s new CEO Dan Schulman spoke at a MoffettNathanson conference, and one thing he said stunned me.

AT&T's network CTO, Yigal Elbaz, cited the robotaxi as a bellwether for how AI is affecting network traffic, and his point holds regardless of Waymo's current troubles. Each vehicle generates about 20 gigabytes of data per day, roughly 30 times the amount a typical mobile user consumes. Most of that traffic flows from the car to the cloud. The network is being asked to run in reverse, and that's a major structural shift, arriving faster than the industry's planning cycles can handle.