Cytranet Bets on Smarter Fiber to Power the Next Wave of AI and Business Internet
For years, fast internet has been treated like a commodity—something you buy in tiers and forget about until it breaks. But as AI workloads spread from research labs to everyday business operations, “good enough” connectivity is quickly becoming a bottleneck. Cytranet, a fiber connectivity and business internet provider, thinks the next chapter is less about raw speed and more about intelligent, reliable, low-latency networks built for modern computing.
In a conversation with Cytranet CTO Doug Roberts, it became clear that the company’s most newsworthy shift isn’t a single product announcement—it’s a broader architectural move: building fiber-backed connectivity designed specifically for AI-era traffic patterns and the growing need for datacenter-adjacent computing.
“Businesses are discovering that their internet connection is now part of their compute stack,” Roberts said. “When you’re syncing data continuously, running inference, or moving large datasets between cloud regions and on-prem systems, the network stops being a utility and starts being a performance factor.”
A different kind of bandwidth problem
Roberts pointed out that the challenge many companies face in 2026 isn’t simply inadequate download speeds. It’s jitter, routing inefficiency, and inconsistent performance during peak usage—issues that show up as choppy video calls, sluggish access to cloud apps, or AI workflows that stall because data can’t move predictably.
“AI doesn’t just add more traffic, it changes the shape of traffic,” he said. “You see more frequent large transfers, more east-west movement between systems, and a higher sensitivity to latency. If you’re training models, moving backups, replicating storage, or even just coordinating multiple SaaS platforms, variability hurts.”
Cytranet’s response, he explained, is to focus on fiber connectivity that is engineered end-to-end for business use cases, with an emphasis on consistency and operational visibility.
“Speed is table stakes. What businesses really want is for performance to be stable at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday when everyone is using it, and stable again at 9 p.m. when automated jobs kick off,” Roberts said.
Fiber as a foundation for “near-cloud” computing
One theme that came up repeatedly was the changing role of datacenters. Rather than everything moving to a few hyperscale clouds, Roberts described a world where companies increasingly rely on a mix: cloud platforms, regional datacenters, and on-prem hardware that sits close to where data is generated.
“Not every workload belongs far away,” he said. “If you’re in healthcare, manufacturing, finance, or anything with real-time decisioning, you often need compute closer to the user or the data source. Fiber is what makes that hybrid model viable.”
According to Roberts, this is especially true for AI inference—where small delays can matter—along with modern security tools that inspect traffic and require stable throughput.
“If you’re backhauling everything to a distant region, you’re paying for it twice: in performance and in complexity,” he said. “Well-connected regional infrastructure changes the equation.”
Why reliability has become the headline metric
Ask businesses what they want from internet service and most will still say “faster.” But Roberts argued that the bigger story is reliability—because every department now depends on connectivity.
“When your point-of-sale, phones, security cameras, ERP system, and cloud tools all ride on the same connection, an outage is no longer an IT inconvenience,” he said. “It’s revenue. It’s operations. It’s customer trust.”
Roberts said Cytranet has been investing in the kind of network design that reduces single points of failure and makes it easier to detect and address problems quickly.
“Redundancy matters, but so does fast diagnosis,” he said. “A lot of downtime is really ‘time to understand.’ If you can see what’s happening in the network—where latency spikes, where packet loss appears—you can fix issues before they cascade.”
AI in the network operations playbook
One of the more forward-looking parts of the interview was Roberts’ discussion of how AI is beginning to influence network operations. While he was careful not to oversell it, he described a practical approach: using machine learning to spot anomalies and patterns that humans might miss, then pairing that with engineers who can act on the signal.
“AI doesn’t replace good network engineering, but it can help us catch subtle changes earlier,” he said. “If you can identify abnormal behavior—like a gradual increase in retransmits on a link, or an unusual traffic pattern that suggests a misconfiguration—you can address it before it becomes a visible problem for customers.”
He also noted that AI-driven applications on the customer side will push providers to become more proactive.
“The tolerance for ‘it seems slow today’ is disappearing,” he said. “When workflows are automated, the network has to be predictable.”
Broadband expectations are rising for businesses of all sizes
A notable shift, Roberts said, is that these needs are no longer limited to large enterprises. Smaller firms are adopting cloud-first tools, sending more data offsite, and experimenting with AI features embedded in everyday platforms.
“A ten-person company today can have an operational footprint that used to look like a 200-person company,” he said. “They’re using cloud accounting, CRM, voice, security services, analytics—sometimes even customer support automation. Their connectivity needs scale faster than their headcount.”
That, Roberts added, is why business internet has to be designed around outcomes—uptime, latency, support responsiveness—rather than just a speed number.
“Businesses don’t buy megabits,” he said. “They buy the ability to run their business without friction.”
What’s next
Roberts sees the next year as a period where fiber connectivity, broadband expansion, and datacenter strategy converge. AI will accelerate that convergence by raising expectations for responsiveness and reliability across every sector.
“The companies that treat connectivity as strategic infrastructure will move faster,” he said. “They’ll deploy new tools faster, secure their environments more effectively, and give customers a better experience.”
And for Cytranet, he said, the goal is straightforward: build business internet that holds up under the real-world pressures of AI-era workloads.
“It’s not about chasing hype,” Roberts said. “It’s about building networks that make modern businesses work the way they’re supposed to—quietly, consistently, and at scale.”
