Cytranet’s CTO Doug Roberts has learned to expect a certain kind of call from customers: the one that starts with a complaint about sluggish performance and ends with a different question entirely.
“Most of the time, it’s not that the internet is ‘down,’” Roberts said in an interview. “It’s that the way people use bandwidth has fundamentally changed. AI, cloud apps, video collaboration—everything is more real-time. The tolerances are tighter. Businesses notice every hiccup.”
That shift is why Cytranet, a business-focused connectivity and IT provider, is expanding its fiber-based capabilities and rethinking what “good internet” actually means for modern organizations. It’s not just about higher speeds, Roberts argued. It’s about predictability, failover, and building networks that can handle AI-era workloads without turning into an expensive science project.
### From “fast enough” to “always on”
Roberts described a clear pattern: many organizations upgraded their operations over the last few years—moving phone systems to the cloud, adopting Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace more deeply, adding security layers, and now experimenting with AI tools that sit on top of everything. Yet the underlying connectivity is often treated as a commodity.
“That mindset worked when the core goal was email and basic web access,” he said. “Now, connectivity is the foundation for every other business function. If you’re running cloud-based ERP, VoIP, remote desktops, security monitoring, and then you add AI assistants or image processing, you need consistent throughput and low latency. ‘Best effort’ becomes a business risk.”
According to Roberts, the current newsworthy moment for many mid-sized companies is that fiber connectivity is no longer a “nice-to-have” reserved for big metros or enterprise headquarters. As fiber footprints expand and the cost-performance math improves, more businesses can justify the move—especially those juggling multiple locations.
“Fiber changes the conversation,” he said. “Symmetrical capacity, lower latency, and stability make it easier to standardize network performance across sites. That’s huge when you’re trying to deliver the same experience to employees in a branch office that you do at your main location.”
### Broadband is evolving—so is the definition of business internet
Roberts was quick to point out that not every use case demands premium fiber on day one, and he cautioned against one-size-fits-all advice.
“What’s exciting right now is the number of viable options,” he said. “Fiber is a top-tier foundation, but hybrid designs are becoming much more common. You can pair fiber with fixed wireless, or use diverse carriers for resiliency. The key is engineering it correctly and monitoring it.”
He emphasized that the “business internet” conversation is increasingly about architecture: redundancy, route diversity, service-level expectations, and the ability to fail over smoothly—especially for organizations that can’t afford downtime.
“We see companies moving from a single connection to a resilient design,” he said. “Even a short outage can ripple into lost sales, stalled operations, and support tickets that take hours to unwind. If you’re processing transactions or supporting distributed teams, reliability is your best feature.”
### AI is changing network traffic in subtle ways
When asked how AI affects connectivity, Roberts didn’t focus on sensational numbers about bandwidth consumption. Instead, he described a quieter change: AI pushes more workflows into the cloud, and it increases the importance of consistent network performance.
“AI isn’t only a single app that needs a lot of bandwidth,” he said. “It’s that it’s being embedded into everything—search, document creation, customer support, analytics. The result is more dependence on cloud responsiveness. When latency spikes, users blame the tools. But the network is often the hidden variable.”
Roberts said businesses adopting AI should treat the network like a measurable system rather than a black box.
“Know what your baseline performance looks like,” he said. “Monitor jitter and packet loss, not just throughput. A lot of teams are surprised to learn that a connection can look ‘fast’ in a speed test but still perform poorly for real-time apps.”
### Data centers and the return of “where”
The cloud era led some leaders to believe that geography no longer mattered. Roberts thinks that assumption is fading.
“People are re-learning that ‘where’ still matters,” he said. “If your applications are hosted in a data center across the country, and your users are local, that introduces a performance tax. We’re seeing more interest in regional data center strategies, better peering, and building paths that reduce latency.”
He added that data center conversations are also shifting due to compliance and security needs, as well as cost control.
“Businesses want options,” Roberts said. “Some workloads belong in the public cloud, some belong in a colocation environment, and some can be kept on-prem. The network has to support all of it—securely.”
### Building resilience without complexity
One theme Roberts returned to repeatedly was simplicity. Not simplistic technology, but operational clarity.
“Companies don’t want a brittle setup that only one person understands,” he said. “They want reliable performance and a clear plan when something breaks. That’s where good design and good documentation matter.”
He argued that resilient connectivity shouldn’t require constant manual attention. The goal, he said, is to build a system that can withstand provider issues, equipment failures, and traffic spikes.
“Resilience isn’t a luxury,” he said. “It’s what lets your team focus on business instead of chasing outages.”
### What business leaders should ask right now
Roberts suggested a few practical questions leaders should be asking as they consider fiber upgrades or broader connectivity changes:
– “Do we have a single point of failure for internet access at any critical site?”
– “If our primary connection fails, how fast do we fail over—and will users notice?”
– “Are we measuring packet loss and latency trends, or only reacting to complaints?”
– “If we’re rolling out AI tools, have we tested performance during peak hours?”
– “Do we know where our critical applications are hosted, and what the latency is from each location?”
He also encouraged organizations to think of connectivity as a growth enabler, not just an expense.
“When you get the network right, everything else gets easier,” Roberts said. “Security policies are easier to enforce, cloud apps behave better, and expansion to new sites becomes less stressful. It’s one of those foundational decisions that pays you back over and over.”
As businesses race to modernize—adopting AI, consolidating applications, and supporting hybrid work—Roberts sees fiber and thoughtfully engineered broadband as the quiet infrastructure story behind the headlines.
“AI gets the spotlight,” he said. “But none of it works well without a strong, well-managed network. That’s the part we’re helping customers get right.”
