Keynote leaders weigh in on permitting, workforce, and the program dividing the industry.

ISE EXPO 2026 is bookended by two keynote conversations. The opening panel brings together David Stehlin, Chief Executive Officer, TIA; Darren Farnan, General Manager, United Fiber; *Nick Fischer, General Manager, South Region, GFiber; and Kristina Harrison, Executive Vice President, Operations, Brightspeed.

The closing panel features Shirley Bloomfield, former NTCA Chief Executive Officer; Michael Hamilton, Director of Operations, Fiber Business Unit, C Spire; Bo Gresham, Chief Revenue Officer, Dycom Industries; and Steve Harris, Vice President, Sales/Marketing, UCL Swift.

Ahead of the show, we asked each of them questions about what the industry is getting right, whether BEAD can still deliver, how to solve the workforce shortage, and what success actually looks like.

Consensus on Fiber

The clearest agreement across both keynotes is on technology: the industry has settled on fiber for the long term.

“We’ve aligned around fiber as the most future-ready platform, and we’re seeing unprecedented levels of public and private investment driving real momentum in deployment,” said Stehlin.

For Farnan, whose cooperative serves some of the lowest-density territory in Missouri, the bigger shift is in how the country talks about broadband. 

“One thing the industry is getting right is recognizing that broadband is essential infrastructure,” he said. “Fiber is no longer viewed as a luxury service. It is critical for education, healthcare, agriculture, economic development, and quality of life.”

For Harrison, the progress shows in what operators now prioritize: "sustainable economics, operational readiness and customer adoption, not just passing homes."

And Harris points to the architecture itself.

“By moving toward passive optical networks, operators are securing a more sustainable future with lower power consumption, reduced maintenance costs, and a vastly superior Customer Quality of Experience (QoE),” he said.

Bloomfield, who spent decades advocating for rural providers at NTCA, adds a long-term maintenance dimension to the case for fiber. The technology, she notes, has a nearly unlimited lifespan and keeps operating expenses low, which she said is "particularly critical for those providers in areas where the 'windshield' time for truck rolls can drag on ROI."

Bloomfield notes that the deployment learning curve accelerated sharply during COVID, when local obstacles were sidelined for the sake of speed. "Did we learn nothing about efficiency?" she asks. What the industry proved it could do under pressure, she suggests, makes the return to slow permitting and bureaucratic process all the more frustrating.

The responses identify the same obstacles again and again: permitting, pole access, and workforce.

“Significant gaps remain, particularly regarding permitting and pole access, which continue to be primary roadblocks holding back progress,” said Fischer.

Harrison agrees: “Permitting and rights-of-way remain a major impact on volume and speed to deliver.”

Bloomfield, who spent more than 35 years connected to NTCA advocating for small rural providers, has seen how local obstacles derail builds. "The first time I had a community-based provider share that a railroad crossing agreement slowed down their deployment by 18 months, my jaw dropped."

Rural geography adds another layer of difficulty. “Rural fiber construction is fundamentally different from building in urban or suburban markets,” Farnan said. “We serve some of the lowest-density areas in Missouri, averaging around 2.5 members per mile in parts of our territory.”

Where BEAD Stands

The consensus these leaders share on fiber does not necessarily extend to BEAD.

“From my perspective, BEAD has not yet been successful,” Stehlin said. “More than four years in, and very few BEAD-funded networks have been built. And along the way, the situation on the ground has changed.”

In the same period, "the ramp in privately funded AI data center builds has been tremendous," he said, with suppliers developing new products for data center designs and construction firms re-targeting their workforces to build them.

“I think the lesson is government should be a catalyst for things like fundamental security and infrastructure improvements and not wrap so much bureaucracy around it that it becomes a stumbling block to success.”

For Bloomfield, who helped shape BEAD, the program's struggles carry particular weight.

“I poured my heart and soul into the crafting of BEAD during all of the Infrastructure Act deliberations,” she said. “So, to watch the endless delays, complications, and then unraveling of some key provisions, like fiber preference, was something I likely took a bit too personally.”

She worries about where the program landed. Seeing untested technologies receive large awards, she said, leaves her concerned the industry may have missed an amazing opportunity, and that federal broadband funding of this scale “will have come and gone and not be replicated.” Still, she holds out hope the program will succeed.

For Harrison, the definition of success is straightforward: “BEAD success is connecting people who have historically lacked access to quality connectivity with reliable, affordable and lasting infrastructure that provides them the connection for today’s digital world and supports the innovations of tomorrow.”

Getting there, she said, depends on speed: “We need to execute quickly, which is dependent on strong partnerships between fiber providers and the states.”

Harrison makes clear that the partnerships are about more than paperwork and they need to actively remove the obstacles that slow delivery once construction is underway.

Farnan, whose rural Missouri cooperative has built through some of the most cost-intensive terrain in the program's target footprint, is direct about what the program needs to function for providers like his: "Clear guidance, realistic timelines, and streamlined approval processes. Rural projects are more complex and more expensive, and programs need to reflect those realities. Ultimately, BEAD succeeds when geography no longer determines opportunity.”

GFiber, which sits entirely outside the program, is rooting for its success. 

“While GFiber is not participating in BEAD, success for the program looks the same to us as it does to anyone else: more people getting fast, reliable internet,” Fischer said. But he returns the conversation to the choke points: “We have to make it easier to build, and funding alone won’t put fiber in the ground.”

The Missing Workers

Wherever the funding comes from, the networks still need people to build them, and on this point, the concern is unanimous.

“We’re looking at a need for hundreds of thousands of additional workers to meet the scale of broadband deployment over the next few years,” Stehlin said.

TIA’s answer is Broadband Nation, an initiative connecting job seekers with local training and career opportunities across the industry.

Harrison points to a pipeline that’s been narrowing for a long time: “People pursuing careers in the trades and trade program enrollments have been declining for years.”

Brightspeed’s response includes standardized training, clearer career paths, and partnerships with colleges and technical schools.

Fischer said GFiber is taking a similar approach, emphasizing vocational training and working to make network construction a more attractive career path. 

"The industry as a whole needs to lean further into local workforce development to ensure we have the talent required for this historic build-out, he said."

Farnan included a lesson from United Fiber’s rapid growth: “technology and people have to evolve together.”

Harris argues the shortage is as much about quality as quantity. The industry, he said, faces a dual challenge: a hands-on skills gap compounded by a race to the bottom on material quality.

"We see a shortage of qualified technicians who understand the nuances of precision splicing—such as proper fiber preparation, environmental cleanliness, and the physics of a core-aligned arc," he said. 

He also argues the training model itself is aging out, with broad, long-form certifications giving way to hands-on micro-credentials.

“In a fast-moving market, the industry needs a 'just-in-time' learning model," he said. "Micro-credentials act as real-time qualifiers, proving a technician has mastered a specific, current skill rather than just general theory. We aren’t just training for a career anymore; we are training for the next 18 months of technology.”

The goal, as Harris puts it, is to move from a workforce that "knows everything" to one that can "learn anything" quickly.

Beyond Homes Passed

The industry’s most consequential gap, in the view of both Hamilton and Harris, is the distance between where deployment metrics stop and where real service begins.

Hamilton, who oversees fiber operations for C Spire across more than 160 communities, locates that gap. “The gap isn’t always the build,” he said. “It’s the last 100 feet and what happens after the customer says yes.”

In his experience, the friction exists at the transitions: OSP contractors finish a segment and hand off to drop crews, who hand off to installation technicians, who hand off to customer care.

“Every one of those handoffs is a place where communication breaks down, and customers feel it,” he said.

Harris traces part of that problem to the shortcuts operators reach for in the name of speed. Mechanical connectors and pre-terminated drop cables trade short-term convenience for long-term network health, introducing degradation points and unmanageable slack in the outside plant. The standard he wants the industry to measure itself against is “First Time Right.”

“A network is only as strong as its weakest splice,” he said.

This makes the metrics the industry relies on to measure progress all the more misleading.

“Homes passed is a construction metric, not a success metric,” Hamilton said.

Harris agrees: “‘Homes Passed’ is a vanity metric if those homes aren’t supported by a high-reliability, low-maintenance connection.”

A home passed, Hamilton notes, “isn’t a home served until someone has completed that installation and the customer is online.”

Pointing to homes passed while ignoring take rates and service quality, he said, “is how you build impressive maps and miss the mission entirely.”

For Farnan, the real measure is community impact.

“The technical metrics matter, but for us, the real measurement is community impact,” he said. “Broadband changes the future opportunities of rural communities. We see that every day across our footprint. Success is seeing students able to fully participate in digital learning or seeing healthcare providers expand telehealth services. It is about being able to work from home and helping businesses compete without being limited by connectivity.

” Meaningful progress, he added, “is when geography no longer limits what a community or individual can become.”

That human dimension is what Farnan’s team uses for motivation.

“Our team thrives on the many notes we get from our customers sharing how much fiber connectivity from a local provider means to them,” he said. “Those conversations are every bit as important as deployment statistics.”

Bloomfield agrees the economic story is undertold.

"The part of the narrative that deserves more attention is what the deployment of broadband actually brings economically to a community or a region,” she said.

She points specifically to the work of Matt Dunne and the Center on Rural Innovation, which has charted the economic impacts fiber broadband brings to entrepreneurs, small businesses, and community vitality.

The AI Effect

The responses agree that AI's impact is real and measurable, but differ on who benefits.

Stehlin sees a structural shift where AI-driven workloads are reshaping how networks and data centers are designed and built.

“Hyperscalers are spending eight times more in CapEx than Telecom companies,” he noted.

For some TIA members, AI is a major growth driver. For others, the focus on AI data centers is, in his words, "sucking the air out of the room": consuming disproportionate amounts of fiber capacity, equipment, and supply chain resources, and making it harder for traditional operators to secure what they need.

"Ultimately," he said, "AI isn't just another technology cycle—it's a structural shift in how digital infrastructure is designed, built, and scaled."

Harrison said the near-term wins are real: automation from insights, better prediction from historical data. But she thinks the industry is still underestimating the bigger win.

“The real opportunity isn’t siloed use cases, it’s connecting AI across all core functions; design, construction, operations and the customer experience.”

And in the field, Harris sees AI changing what a technician is.

“AI isn’t replacing the technician; it’s a tool that allows our workforce to leverage data to work smarter,” he said. "AI acts as a 'digital co-pilot' that accelerates both how we build and how we learn."

Building Like You Plan to Stay

Harrison, whose company is building at a pace of more than a million passings a year, knows where big builds break down.

“Cracks start to show during hand-offs; design to build, construction to inspection, or deployment to operations,” she said. The mitigation is a tight process integration and a real-time visibility.

Hamilton's concern is the gap between building and activation, noting competition means you can't let a well-built network sit dark."

As Hamilton sees it, sequencing decisions have to account for both construction capacity and installation readiness simultaneously, because a neighborhood that's been passed but not yet activated is still a neighborhood a competitor can win.

He's seen what happens when operational discipline breaks down in the field. In the unpredictable markets C Spire serves, flexibility is as important as planning.

 "You have to maintain flexibility without losing momentum," he said. "That means cross-trained crews, local contractor relationships that can flex with you, and installation teams that aren't waiting on a six-week backlog when a neighborhood goes live."

Farnan has watched United Fiber grow from a co-op project, launched when nearly 90% of its membership was unserved or underserved, into a regional fiber footprint, without losing its focus.

“At the end of the day, we never want to lose sight of why we started," he said, "and that is to help our rural customers have the same opportunities as anywhere else.”

Asked how operators should build a strategy resilient through 2035, Stehlin said they need to take a long-term view and "skate to where the puck will be."

With 6G architectures taking shape and intelligence migrating from the core to the edge, he said, “success will depend on building networks where intelligence is distributed across the entire infrastructure, not concentrated in a single part of the network.”

Hamilton succinctly states the mindset running through all the responses: “We're not building to a grant deadline. We're building a network we'll stand behind in these communities for decades."

Interview responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.

*Ashley Church, General Manager, West Region, GFiber, will be replacing Nick Fischer on the Opening Keynote panel at ISE EXPO 2026.

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