Breaking Barriers: Using AI to Develop Strong Connected Collaboration in Today’s Fiber Industry 

Breaking Barriers: Using AI to Develop Strong Connected Collaboration in Today’s Fiber Industry 

In this week’s Fiber for Breakfast episode, Jon Willow, Co-founder, Board Chair and Digital Equity Practice Leader of the Community Broadband Action Network (CBAN) discusses her membership work for CBAN which was founded back in 2017. Willow discusses how she’s taking a pragmatic approach in using AI tools to help develop stronger connected collaboration across the fiber industry.  

Watch the full Fiber for Breakfast episode here.

Why Fiber?
Willow shared that she and her co-founder, Curtis Dean have an extensive history, going as far back as her college days. They had been working together for more than 30 years doing various kinds of jobs. CBAN was built from the ground up and is currently reaching 200 members across 35 states and two Canadian territories. Willow explained how she got involved with fiber and why she is passionate about it. Willow stated, “Fiber is the best solution most of the time. Fiber is the long-term investment play. We do understand that there are instances where whole networks might not be able to have fiber, but fiber is the preferred choice.” Willow added, “As someone who’s been studying the utility industry for a very long time, I don’t think it really takes a rocket scientist to understand that other technology is short term.”  

Willow shared that looking back through the history of fiber, the industry wasn’t aware of what they had when they first started putting fiber in the ground. “We didn’t know, and we did not understand the awesome power of it. There’s still more power to leverage out of fiber and I don’t know if that can be said for other technologies,” Willow said.

Community Controlled Broadband

The mission of CBAN is to help local entities pursue community controlled broadband. Willow mentioned that community controlled broadband can look like a lot of things. There are members who have great public/private partnerships who sit on open access networks, and there are members who lease. CBAN supports them with direct one-on-one assistance with educational events connecting them to resources and networking. They are keen to sit down, meet with their members and non-members to connect people together and help them make the most cost-effective choices.

AI’s Role in Coalition Effectiveness
Willow was recently awarded a fellowship from Michigan State University. This fellowship is awarded every year for Regional Economic Innovation (REI) to study a pressing question about AI. This project will examine administrative challenges facing multi-organization coalitions, explore AI-enabled solutions for collaborative inefficiencies, and develop an ethical framework for AI implementation in collaborative settings.

Willow explains that this study is a collaborative effort between a group of about 12 people that care about AI and its use case in building coalition effectiveness. “AI is what everyone is talking about,” Willow said. The group will be looking at large language model tools, automation tools and customer relationship management. Willow shared that they have about 60 perspective tools in about eight areas that they’re going to look at and engage with at this early stage of the project.  “We’ve got people working across different organizations who may or may not have the parity in their subject matter expertise on certain things,” Willow said. “We are going to create a framework that will include a huge piece on AI ethics and governance.” Their work in this first round will result in a written report and if everything goes well, they will be able to explore further in the next iteration.