Full speed ahead: Gain speed from disruption at Metro Connect USA 2026

How to turn disruption into success

The winds of change and disruption shifted the courses of many fiber network operators over the last year. Few operators expect smooth sailing this year, but it’s not all storm clouds ahead. The disruptive forces impacting the industry present unprecedented opportunities to grow and increase revenue. At the risk of overusing the sailing metaphor, nimble fiber network operators can expect to travel several knots faster than the competition toward their desired destination.

So how can fiber operators win in a disruptive market? That’s sure to be the underlying theme of conversations among fiber providers at the upcoming Metro Connect USA event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in February. If you’re attending, plan to join the Amdocs team for a lively discussion on that topic with C-level technology leaders from two fiber providers. We’re hosting a fireside chat where you’ll get a first-hand perspective on the disruptive forces impacting the industry today.

Amdocs General Manager Harel Givon and Pragash Pillai, Chief Technology Officer of Hotwire Communications, and Craig Cowden, EVP and Chief Technology and Product Officer of Metronet, will explore what’s working in today’s market.  Mark your calendar for February 23 at 14:00 on the main stage.

You’ll come away from the fireside chat with new insights into how leaders are navigating disruptive trends. How do these leaders plan to keep deploying fiber at scale? How will AI impact operations? How will AI impact revenue and the customer experience? Let’s preview the fireside chat, focusing on how fiber providers are turning disruption into opportunity.

Reach more customers sooner

What’s an obvious way to measure success in a disruptive market? Expanding fiber networks to reach more customers and to generate more revenue—ahead of the competition. For many operators, deployment speed remains hampered by manual processes. It takes weeks and multiple site visits just to ready designs for permitting. Rework and excess trenching and cabling increase costs during construction. You can add speed by building AI and automation into every phase of your fiber deployment process.

Consider how our team of 1,200+ fiber design specialists works. They rely on AI and automation to complete design tasks more quickly. Their tools not only accelerate workflows, but they also help optimize designs, reducing trenching, cabling, and rework costs. A permitting matrix helps automate the steps needed to ensure designs comply with applicable standards. Each aspect of the design-to-construction process moves faster, with clients seeing up to 50% faster network deployment.

Fewer credits and happier customers

Many fiber network operators have prioritized autonomous network operations center (NOC) projects. That’s smart for myriad reasons, including reducing the costs of spotting, diagnosing, and resolving issues. A self-healing network prevents outages and reduces resolution time when they occur. The customer experience benefit of fewer outages is clear. Reduced outages and improved resolution times decrease the likelihood that customers will report issues. That leads to fewer instances where you need to issue credits to customers. It’s a virtuous and revenue-enhancing cycle: faster outage resolution leads to fewer credits, happier customers, and lower customer service costs. Over the longer term, you increase loyalty and reduce churn.

Enable next-gen operations

Autonomous NOC is just the beginning. Fiber providers are responding to pricing pressure and industry consolidation by modernizing their business and operational systems. By moving from legacy technology to cloud-native applications and architectures, providers unlock a cascade of cost and agility benefits. Perhaps most crucially, you can respond more quickly to competitive pressures and changes in customer expectations. You’ll also be positioned to play either side of the consolidation game thanks to greater M&A readiness. That means you’ll be better able to integrate new customers fast or increase your appeal to strategic or financial buyers.

Win more cross-sell and upsell opportunities

Modernization opens the door to AI use cases that take advantage of your wealth of customer data. When you use AI to drive offer personalization and sales engagement, you maximize the cross-sell and upsell opportunities created by improving the customer experience. Customers will want to purchase more of your must-have services because you deliver ease of use and reliability. GenAI can help you leverage data-driven insights to craft offers that appeal to individual customers.

Success requires mature agentic AI that’s trained on fiber-specific use cases. It also calls for AI-ready data that can provide a single source of truth. Otherwise, you’ll find it challenging to meet real-world data quality and governance needs. With modernized systems and applications, you’ll be able to realize the true promise of AI—instead of getting stuck in proof of concept exercises that never quite meet quality or compliance standards.

See you at Metro Connect USA 2026

Let’s discuss your strategy for thriving in a disruptive era for the fiber industry. Reach out to our team to schedule a time to meet. We also hope to see you at the “Fireside Chat–Winning in a Disruptive Market: The CTO Blueprint for Growth and Modernization” with Metronet and Hotwire Communications on February 23 at 2:00 pm on the main stage.