Cytranet’s Doug Roberts on Why Fiber Still Matters in an AI-First Year
The loudest tech story of the year has been artificial intelligence—new models, new chips, new data centers. But behind the headlines, a quieter race is deciding who can actually use AI at scale: connectivity.
Doug Roberts, CTO at Cytranet, says the companies that win with AI won’t just be the ones with the best software—they’ll be the ones with the most reliable, scalable networks.
“Everyone is talking about compute,” Roberts said in an interview. “But compute is only useful if you can move data in and out of it fast, safely, and consistently. That’s where fiber and business-grade broadband become strategic, not just operational.”
Roberts’ comments come as more mid-sized businesses, manufacturers, healthcare providers, and logistics firms adopt AI tools that generate and consume huge amounts of data—video, sensor feeds, product telemetry, customer interactions, and high-volume analytics. For many organizations, that data isn’t staying in one place anymore. It’s moving between offices, cloud platforms, and increasingly, regional data centers built to shorten latency.
“AI is changing traffic patterns,” Roberts explained. “It’s not just ‘users going to the internet’ like it was ten years ago. It’s machines talking to machines, applications calling multiple services, backups running continuously, and large datasets syncing across sites. Businesses feel it as soon as they try to scale.”
A shift from ‘good enough’ internet to engineered connectivity
Roberts said one of the most noticeable changes in the past year is how quickly organizations outgrow consumer-style assumptions about internet service.
“For a long time, people thought: ‘We have broadband, we’re fine,’” he said. “Then they add cloud phone systems, move workloads to the cloud, put cameras everywhere, start using AI tools, and suddenly the network is the bottleneck. When uptime affects revenue, the conversation changes.”
He pointed to a practical issue that doesn’t always show up in marketing materials: performance under load.
“Speed tests are snapshots,” Roberts said. “Businesses need predictable throughput during peak use, stable latency for real-time apps, and support that treats an outage like an emergency. That’s the difference between ‘internet’ and business internet.”
Fiber’s moment isn’t new—but it’s newly obvious
Fiber connectivity has been steadily expanding for years, but Roberts believes the AI wave is accelerating its relevance.
“Fiber isn’t trendy—it’s foundational,” he said. “The physics are on its side. If you’re serious about video, cloud, disaster recovery, and AI workloads, fiber gives you headroom. It also tends to come with service-level expectations that matter to businesses.”
Roberts also noted that the most meaningful upgrades aren’t always about raw download speeds. Symmetry—upload capacity matching download capacity—is increasingly important.
“A lot of AI workflows are upload-heavy,” he said. “You’re sending data to train models, pushing backups, replicating databases, uploading camera footage. If your upstream is constrained, your ‘fast internet’ stops being fast.”
Datacenters move closer, and the network has to follow
Another development Roberts called “quietly transformational” is the growth of regional data centers and edge infrastructure.
“Companies don’t always want everything in a hyperscale region hundreds of miles away,” he said. “They want lower latency, better control, and more resilience. As compute distributes, your network design has to distribute with it.”
In that environment, connectivity becomes less like a utility and more like a system that has to be engineered: redundant paths, diverse carriers, thoughtful routing, and clear failover behavior.
“Redundancy isn’t just buying a second line,” Roberts said. “It’s asking: Does it share the same conduit? Does it terminate at the same building entrance? Does it fail for the same reasons? True diversity is harder, but it’s what keeps businesses running.”
Security and reliability as the baseline for AI adoption
As organizations adopt AI tools—especially those that touch sensitive customer or operational data—Roberts said the conversation often turns from excitement to risk management.
“AI increases the value of your data, and it increases the consequences of losing it,” he said. “So companies are asking more about network security, segmentation, monitoring, and incident response. They’re also asking where data lives, how it moves, and how to keep it compliant.”
Roberts emphasized that modern connectivity decisions are rarely isolated. They tie into cloud strategy, identity management, endpoint security, and disaster recovery planning.
“The best outcomes happen when network, security, and application teams plan together,” he said. “Otherwise you end up with a fast connection feeding a fragile architecture.”
What businesses should ask before they upgrade
Asked what practical advice he’d give a growing business evaluating fiber or higher-grade broadband, Roberts didn’t start with megabits.
“Start with the business case,” he said. “What happens if you’re down for two hours? What applications are mission-critical? What’s the growth plan for headcount, cameras, IoT, or AI use?”
From there, he suggests focusing on a few concrete questions:
• Is the connection symmetrical, and is that symmetry guaranteed or ‘best effort’?
• What are the latency and jitter characteristics for real-time applications?
• What does the service agreement actually commit to for repair times and uptime?
• Is there a real redundant path—and is it physically diverse?
• How will you monitor performance and get alerted before users start complaining?
“These aren’t theoretical questions,” Roberts said. “They determine whether your network quietly supports your business—or becomes the reason a project stalls.”
Looking ahead: bandwidth as a growth strategy
Roberts expects the next year to bring more realism into IT planning. Not less ambition—just more emphasis on the infrastructure required to make ambition work.
“AI makes people want to do more, faster,” he said. “That’s great. But it also exposes weak links. I think more businesses will treat connectivity like they treat power or logistics: as a growth strategy.”
In that sense, the biggest connectivity story isn’t just that fiber keeps expanding—it’s that the definition of “enough internet” is changing.
“Businesses don’t need a buzzword,” Roberts said. “They need a network they can trust when the stakes are real.”
