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When building fiber, Zayo follows the demand — but where is that demand coming from?
In the very first episode of Unmuted, RCR Wireless News sat down with Bill Long, chief product officer at Zayo, to unpack the company’s strategy in the fiber market — a sector undergoing seismic shifts as AI, automation, and reindustrialization reshape U.S. connectivity demand.
“When you’re doing fiber expansion, the smart way to do it is to go where the customers are telling you to go,” said Long. “Just follow where the demand is.”
So where is the demand?
AI and the new geography of demand
That demand, he explained, is increasingly driven by AI workloads and large-scale data center development. “We’re seeing AI… in a couple of different tiers,” Long said, pointing to the need for massive fiber connectivity into new hyperscale campuses — “gargantuan” facilities approaching a gigawatt of power.
While AI data centers are a key catalyst, Long emphasized that connecting those single sites “is not sufficient to underwrite a long-haul sort of build.” Instead, Zayo is designing routes that “connect the communities that are along the way,” often working with NTIA, BEAD, and other government programs to ensure rural inclusion.
Reindustrialization and machine-to-machine growth
Zayo’s fiber strategy is also being shaped by what Long called the “reindustrialization and continued digitization of the U.S. economy.” As manufacturers reshore operations to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, “those factories don’t look like rows and rows of people doing things manually. They look like lots of robots — and that needs lots of connectivity.”
He described one customer — a major retailer investing more than $100 million per automated fulfillment center — that requires “dual hundred gig connectivity” to support robotics and logistics systems. Dual hundred-gig or 100G refers to the use of two separate 100-gigabit-per-second connections for a single device or system, which provides significant benefits in terms of redundancy and bandwidth. “In reality, there’s only so many cat videos that a person can watch,” Long joked. “But there’s a lot more bandwidth that can be driven by the automation that’s going in the factory.”
This shift, he noted, is moving demand from urban business districts toward suburban and industrial corridors, where this reindustrialization is happening and fiber connectivity is “expanding into more interesting places.”
Balancing private capital and public funding
Zayo has been active in leveraging both private and public capital to accelerate expansion. Long highlighted the company’s Dallas-to-El Paso long-haul project, which passes by major data centers — including the Stargate facility in West Texas — while also connecting underserved communities.
Building those “off-ramps” for local service can be prohibitively expensive, he said, which is why programs like BEAD and Middle Mile grants are critical. “Having public policy dollars that can help us fund doing those off-ramps that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do is great policy,” Long said. “That small investment gets out of the doom loop — it’s going to create a tax base, and it’s going to be a great payback for the tax dollar.”
The market reality: Flight to quality
When asked whether the U.S. fiber market is overbuilding, Long said the competition remains “robust” — but warned of “spreadsheet competition” from newcomers. “People that can actually draw a line on a map and create a spreadsheet that says, oh, this is great, I should be able to make money on this,” he explained. “Without understanding the practical realities.”
Zayo, he said, welcomes such entrants. “Go and put your money into the ground. And when you go bankrupt, we’ll be ready to buy those assets.”
Still, Long predicted the next phase of consolidation, not fragmentation. “There is a race for infrastructure that values predictability and the ability to deliver quickly,” he said. “You’ll see a flight to quality — from the folks with the money … to … those that have a proven track record.”
Embedding AI in Zayo’s own operations
AI isn’t just driving customer demand — it’s also transforming Zayo’s internal operations. “Across the board, pretty much everywhere,” Long said. “Everything from network planning to customer turn-up to inventory management to customer care.”
He revealed that Zayo is preparing a major product launch in the coming months that will “completely change the paradigm for how enterprises can design, deploy, and manage their networks.” The initiative will integrate AI throughout design, implementation, and management workflows, simplifying operations for a new generation of IT leaders.
Permitting bottlenecks remain
As for what still slows fiber deployment the most, Long didn’t hesitate: “Permitting is the biggest one.”
“There’s an order of magnitude difference between data center permitting and fiber permitting,” he said. “If you’re deploying a data center, you’re working in one municipality in one state. When you’re deploying fiber… a lot of our long-haul routes span multiple states … multiple municipalities. The permitting process has got to evolve to allow us to go faster.”
