The Broadband Industry Shift: What BSPs Will Need to Compete and Win in 2025

2025 will be an interesting year for the broadband industry - and by interesting, I mean, hold on to your hats. 

In particular, I see three trends reshaping it: 1) An evolution from providing high broadband speeds and price tiers to providing value-based experiences that improve subscribers’ lives, 2) An ongoing shortage of skilled people that will challenge those transitioning to become broadband experience providers, and 3) the role AI will play in helping service providers make the most of trends one and two. 

Speed is a factor… until it's not

Think about buying a car. Unless you’re a NASCAR driver, shaving half a second off a 0-60 time or hitting 200 mph probably doesn't matter much to you, right? But your driving experience does. Is the car comfortable?  How’s its climate control? Is it easy to stream your favorite music—and how good is the sound system?   

Similarly, in the broadband industry, above a certain point, more speed won’t make much difference. But the total experience does. Can I connect easily? Safely? From anywhere? Are my kids protected from cyberbullying or inappropriate content?  Can I talk to my loved ones whenever I want? 

And as technology keeps offering us new options, it gets complicated and overwhelming. So, BEPs that simplify things will win the hearts of their subscribers.   

What does it take to become an experience provider? First, get good at anticipating your subscriber’s evolving needs. Then, enhance the subscriber experience to meet them by innovating regularly.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. But the right platform makes the difference. A B2B2C platform - one that explicitly covers the needs of business interactions and the ultimate end user, the subscriber - can give BEPs the insights and efficiencies needed to bridge the gap between being a speed-based provider or an experience provider. It can provide capabilities such as increased customer support visibility and marketing automation, so even small providers can engage and grow their subscriber base.

Constant innovation is the major reason we committed to a regular 91-day release cycle at Calix for our cloud-and-software-enabled broadband platform. This way, BEPs can keep innovating but on a predictable schedule.

Labor shortages an ongoing issue 

The reality is the biggest challenge right now is people. Skilled labor is tough to find and retain. And I don't care whether you're talking mechanics, electricians, fiber installers - just not enough, right? And I don’t see that changing much in 2025. In fact, it may become more acute, especially for providers that are already running their business with a thin staff.

This makes it more important for them to run efficient operations, train new staff quickly, and keep applying best practices. Here again, a well-designed B2B2C platform can help. Instead of just generically supporting various roles - network operator, marketer, security analyst—B2B2C platforms begin by analyzing subscriber needs, then building specific capabilities into the platform to meet them. Then, employees with various roles can easily care for their subscribers.

Another part of the answer to the skills, training, and efficiency crisis? AI.

How AI will help BSPs  

No surprise that AI — both analytical AI (e.g., machine learning) and  generative AI— will make a difference for BSPs in 2025 and beyond. How? 

Think about the evolution of calculators. I still remember when the HP calculator became the norm dujour and replaced the slide rule. It did something faster and better. And eventually, so did our personal computers and now our phones.

AI is kind of the same thing. It will allow us to offload work in two ways: by being a superb recommendation engine and by instantly recognizing anomalies.

We’re swimming in data that easily overwhelms us, but analytical AI is really good at finding patterns in those data pools. Combine that with GenAI and you get precise recommendations: “You're looking for this article, this answer, this insight.” It does that very well. 

But it can also monitor huge streams of real-time data and find the anomaly that says, “Something’s wrong here.” Which, in turn, enables a security team to thwart a hack before it happens. 

So, just as with the calculator, we’ll be offloading more work we don’t do well—or that’s beyond our ability—to AI. For BEPs, it will surface network insights for more efficient operations, help them better know their subscribers’ evolving needs, and help them train their people to work more efficiently.  

But what do you do with an insight, an unmet need, or an anomaly - how do you fix a problem? While today’s AI can make recommendations, it’s not ready to trigger actions without supervision. Think of a bank teller who needs to get a manager’s review and authorization for an important transaction.

Human experts are really good at figuring out what to do and what action to take. So, broadband providers should focus on using AI to automate workflows and processes while maintaining human checkpoints and oversight to ensure quality control and appropriate decision-making. 

Down the road a bit, I expect to see AI-driven sandboxes for BEPs to play in. Imagine being able to ask an AI agent for the answer to a specific business problem: “What if I ran this campaign?” or “What if I made this tweak to my network?” Then receive the right recommendation on what to do next and how. Or eventually, when an anomaly is detected, even trigger the next correct action to fix it. 

We’re working on that now. It's a capability I can’t wait to develop - and one I know many innovative broadband experience providers can’t wait to tap.

Shane Eleniak is chief product officer at Calix responsible for all of Calix’s products: Access, premises, cloud and ecosystem, and leads the teams responsible for product strategy, product management, engineering, cloud operations and technology. He has more than 30 years of experience creating cloud, software and networking innovation. Prior to joining Calix, he was the group vice president of the Advanced Broadband Solutions business unit at CommScope, responsible for edge, access and CPE products. This Expert Opinion is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.