Fiber Connect

Beyond BEAD, Fiber Industry Reflects Upon Use Cases at Fiber Connect 2026

What is fiber's expanding role in telehealth, precision agriculture, quantum networks and data centers?

Broadband Breakfast

May 20, 2026 — 5 min read

Photo by Patrick Turner published with permission

ORLANDO, May 20, 2026 – A broadband provider and two journalists attending Fiber Connect 2026 here recapped the lessons they had learned at the annual trade show of the fiber industry – including three BroadbandLive sessions and multiple video interviews in the CHAT.BroadbandBreakfast.com Discussion community.

In the discussion, all three attendees shifted attention from federal deployment funding to fiber's expanding role in telehealth, precision agriculture, quantum networks and data center buildouts.

The conference’s expo floor had a shorter schedule than in previous years due to World Cup scheduling conflicts. But the event still drew thousands of operators, vendors and policy advocates wrestling with a transformed funding landscape after recent changes to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program forced some providers to recalibrate their expansion strategies.

Heidi Joy Harnegie, vice president and general manager of MaxxSouth Broadband, said her company had to scrap an extensive BEAD expansion letter of intent (LOI) after federal guidelines changed cost-per-passing requirements.

"I had an 1,100 mile BEAD expansion LOI that was a — we were going to expand our footprint, and the state was involved. They were so excited. And all of that got changed once the cost per housing had to come down," Harnegie said.

The Mississippi- and Alabama-based cable provider, which is converting its 3,500-mile network to fiber, was able to instead use Capital Projects Fund dollars for public Wi-Fi deployments. Harnegie said the company has completed 10 public Wi-Fi deployments across communities in the past six months, drawing more than $1.5 million in funding while building fiber backhaul to support them.

"You have to be nimble and agile. You have to adjust when the guidelines change because they constantly change," Harnegie said.

Broadband Breakfast journalists reflect

Broadband Breakfast CEO Drew Clark, who moderated the Wednesday panel, said the roughly $21 billion in BEAD non-deployment funds emerged as a major theme of the conference, with states still awaiting guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on permissible uses. He also pointed to the unexpected prominence of fields once considered tangential to broadband.

The conference featured a lot of talk "about fields that maybe we didn't necessarily used to think about as part of communications and broadband, but energy, the role of advanced energy, the role of fusion, and potentially the role of quantum computing and quantum communication," Clark said.

Broadband Breakfast Reporter Akul Saxena, who covered the conference, said fiber's purpose has broadened well beyond residential connectivity. Telehealth has become essential for rural specialist access, precision agriculture promises reduced pesticide and water use through sensor networks, and quantum-secured fiber deployments are underway in Florida, he said.

Use cases expanding

"What struck me most here is how much fiber's purpose and its use cases are expanding," Saxena said. He noted that quantum communications transmit information through individual photons, making fiber uniquely suited to the technology because it provides "the controlled low interference environment that protects them over distance."

Saxena also flagged workforce shortages as a national constraint, citing a Pew research finding that 41 states and the District of Columbia identified workforce challenges in their BEAD plans. Also, a Fiber Broadband Association's workforce training program now operates in 17 states, he said.

Data centers emerged as both an opportunity and a competitive pressure point.

Clark noted the dynamic has created "almost like a competition" in which data center construction is driving up materials prices vis-a-vis fiber-to-the-home operators.

Harnegie said a Blackstone representative told attendees the firm is now building infrastructure capable of supporting 25 Gigabit per second speeds in homes, and she pointed to artificial intelligence-driven applications already in deployment, including traffic signals that adjust in real time and fiber-based oil leak detection systems in Texas.

For her own operations, Harnegie said AI has eliminated roughly 15 percent of call center volume by proactively addressing modem issues, freeing agents for complex customer concerns.

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