Fiber for Breakfast Week 38: 30 Years of Broadband: What We’ve Built, What We’ve Learned, and What Comes Next 

Fiber for Breakfast Week 38: 30 Years of Broadband: What We’ve Built, What We’ve Learned, and What Comes Next 

Thirty years ago, broadband looked quite different. Dial-up was still a business, cable was just beginning to compete for internet customers, and the idea of fiber reaching communities across the country was still a long way from reality. Looking back, much of what happened was not what the industry expected.  

This week’s Fiber for Breakfast took a longer view of that evolution. Gary sat down with Blair Levin, former FCC Chief of Staff and Executive Director of the 2010 National Broadband Plan, to talk about what drove broadband forward, where the industry still has work to do, and how AI is once again changing what networks will be expected to support.  

One of Levin’s first observations was that fiber took longer to gain momentum than he would have predicted. Early on, economics did not always convince investors or incumbent providers fiber was better. Competition helped change that. Cable pushed telcos beyond dial-up, and years later Google Fiber (now “gFiber”) created a different kind of pressure by showing communities and providers what gigabit fiber could look like. Levin described Google Fiber as a catalyst that pushed the market to respond. Today, after another acceleration following COVID, fiber deployment looks vastly different than it did even a decade ago. 

The conversation also returned to the National Broadband Plan and the goals Levin and his team laid out in 2010: get broadband everywhere, get everyone connected, and use those networks to improve essential services. On access, Levin said the country has made considerable progress, with current deployment programs still working to close remaining gaps. But adoption and affordability remain harder problems. The Affordable Connectivity Program helped over 23 million households before funding expired in 2024, leaving affordability again an open question.  

What has changed most may be what those networks are now being asked to do. Gary pushed the conversation beyond simply connecting people to the internet. AI, quantum networking, cloud infrastructure, and new traffic patterns are changing the performance requirements placed on networks and raising questions about whether decisions made around today’s needs will hold up against tomorrow’s. 

Levin argued that this is where the difference between technology matters. Satellite can provide an important connection where better options are not available, but he does not see it as interchangeable with fiber for the long-term demands of an AI-driven economy. Gary made a similar point from the investment side: when operators are putting their own capital to work, fiber continues to attract substantial private investment. Their discussion reflected the broader debate created by the 2025 BEAD restructuring, which moved the program to a technology-neutral selection process.  

The next challenge may also look different from the digital divide the industry has spent decades trying to close. Levin raised the idea of a “token divide,” where access to AI tools and the ability to afford ongoing AI usage could create another gap even among people who already have broadband. That shifts the conversation again. Infrastructure remains essential, but access to the applications riding on top of it may increasingly determine who receives the full economic and productivity benefits.  

That is why Levin believes the industry needs to start thinking about the next communications framework. The Telecommunications ACT of 1996 was built for a different era, just as the National Broadband Plan addressed a different stage of the internet’s development. Whatever comes next will have to account not only for networks, but also AI, cybersecurity, universal service, and the applications increasingly shaping daily life.  

Thirty years of broadband has shown that the target never stays still. The industry moved from dial-up to gigabit fiber, from basic internet access to AI and quantum networks. The lesson from that history is not that we can predict exactly what comes next. It is that the infrastructure decisions made today have to leave room for whatever does. 

Click here to watch the full interview.  

Click here to download the slides.