The dawn of the AI era and the corresponding shift from an information economy to the Thinking Economy, where AI and fiber come together to provide insight and intelligence throughout the network, will lead to numerous shifts in data flows and mindsets for broadband service providers. Stakeholders across the fiber ecosystem, including service providers, equipment manufacturers, and suppliers, need to prepare for the changes coming. We are moving from simply connecting people to the internet to delivering intelligence as a service across the network in a distributed fashion, with all the requirements that will entail.  

In the information economy, the primary role of fiber and broadband service providers was connecting people, businesses, and organizations to the internet so they could exchange information. Data is described as flowing “North-South,” from servers and the cloud (North) to users (South) and vice versa.  

AI and the Thinking Economy changes data flows and services in two distinct fashions. First, data flows start to go from North-South to East-West within the data center between GPUs, servers, and racks, as well as between data centers, with intelligent processes sharing information among different locations. One example is a conversation with a virtual AI assistant such as Amazon or Siri, which uses multiple processes to turn a speech command into text, interpret and act upon the text, then turn the resulting answer into speech to be played back in audio form. The widespread use of Agentic AI in the years to come will only increase East-West data flows, with agents talking to agents on a 24x7 basis to increase productivity and human-agent interaction a smaller part of the whole, with humans providing the guidance, supervision, and double-checking that will be required to make sure jobs are done properly and effectively.  

East-West data flows are driving the densification of fiber within and between data centers, as firms pack as many GPUs, servers, and racks as closely as physically possible, eliminating copper for communications and out-of-band management (OOBM) and leveraging fiber to increase raw bandwidth while decreasing power requirements, because GPUs and cooling them drive the need for gigawatts.  

Within this framework, fiber’s bandwidth and abundance are needed to build and train ever more powerful AI models. Scaling infrastructure means scaling connectivity at a size that boggles the imagination. Multi-year, billion-dollar investments are being made by cloud operators into fiber production to guarantee that capacity will be there to support the construction of hundreds of billions of dollars of new AI facilities.  

But the big Manhattan-island-scale data center facilities are only one portion of the shift beyond building more and bigger broadband pipes, albeit those that get the most attention due to their size and price tags. Delivering intelligence means the need for distribution of intelligence, with AI inference moving out of centralized facilities and as close as possible to the end-user, be it an enterprise optimizing business processes or a person talking to his personal agent on his phone.  

Fiber providers’ role

Fiber service providers will play an essential role in distributing intelligence for the Thinking Economy and will be among the first users to apply it. Already, we see efforts toward zero-touch networks that will allow customers to customize their broadband services based on their applications. Real-time conference calls and gaming sessions would get low-latency priority over other traffic. At the same time, financial interactions would receive extra security, with network parameters automatically adjusted and optimized without human intervention. 

Distributed intelligence is more than simply edge computing. The need for low-latency, and being able to analyze and act upon data rapidly has long been a requirement for applications such as robotics, precision agriculture, and manufacturing, but the true value comes from those edge resources being able to communicate with other peer resources close by in an East-West fashion as well as in a traditional North-South model, where information at the edge is sent back to the cloud for archival storage and aggregate analysis over time. Communication is not an either/or but an all-of-the-above choice.  

Therefore, intelligence takes place anywhere on the network, with fiber service providers acting as the nervous system for moving data and ordering actions as appropriate, deploying and maintaining compute resources at the edge and within its network for intelligence to take place where it is needed. Service providers are not abandoning their traditional role of connecting people and companies to the cloud but are taking a more enhanced and active role in the network. 

For example, the growing use of robotics by businesses to do such mundane tasks as clean floors, move parts and materials from storage to workshops, and deliver groceries to households will require a mixture of wireless and wireline technologies for communications between mobile assets, edge and cloud “brains” to task and conduct processes, and human beings to supervise operations and conduct maintenance and repairs when something inevitably breaks down.  

Vendors ramp investments

The proof of the Thinking Economy and fiber’s role in it can be found in the quarterly earnings statements and press releases of fiber manufacturers worldwide. Corning’s latest earnings statement for the second quarter of 2026 was led by its Optical Communications division, with over $2 billion in sales and net income growth of 77% over last year to $438 million. Key deals Corning has announced this year include a $6 billion multi-year agreement with Meta in January, a $500 million investment from NVIDIA in May to add three new manufacturing plants in North Carolina and Texas, and a multibillion-dollar agreement with Amazon in June.  

Other fiber deals on the books include Prysmian signing a $6.3 billion,10-year agreement with Molex, which will lead that company to more than double its U.S. production capacity. 

Investments are also going into expanding the training pipeline for more skilled workers in fiber optic manufacturing and related technical roles, as we have seen with the continued growth and expansion of FBA’s OpTIC Path™ fiber technician program from a single basic hands-on course and certification to a multi-certification program adding new credentials with the OpTIC Path Data Center Technician Add-On certification to be released in the third quarter of this year.  

The quantum factor

As fiber technologies continue to advance and evolve, it is easy to imagine future trainings and certifications encompassing such advances as multi-core, hollow core, and quantum, with quantum perhaps the most intriguing path for the future. Quantum technology will be a natural complement to AI, providing a solution to complex computational programs unsolvable through ordinary means, such as supply chain optimization and logistical routing, drug design, financial modeling, and materials science and design.  

Fiber plays an essential role in quantum technologies for networking quantum computers and quantum sensors together across the laboratory and at metro size today, with startups and Fortune 500 companies working to build larger quantum networking tools for scaling to regional and national size. Quantum computing will help the Thinking Economy think faster on certain classes of problems. At the same time, quantum sensors will provide richer and more insightful data in fields such as biology, health care, and geology.  

Needless to say, fiber service providers of all sizes have increasing opportunities ahead of them beyond simple fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity, with middle mile and data center connectivity scaling up to meet the needs for larger AI models, supporting distributed intelligence through the requirements for increased bandwidth, internet exchanges, and edge computing, and ultimately connecting the Thinking Economy to the Quantum Ecosystem for another speed boost. The next five years are full of prospects, but owners and executives must be prepared to embrace them. 

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