Led by such U.S. cable giants as Comcast and Charter Communications, North American providers are actually pouring resources into an even broader range of next-gen technologies these days, including DOCSIS 4.0, XGS-PON, smart amplifiers, edge computing, quantum computing and more. And in our June issue, we will focus on many of the latter ones. But, in this issue, we will tackle AI, automation and machine learning because they underpin most, if not all, of the other technological moves that operators are making today and promise to have the greatest impact. Cable providers and their tech vendor partners are particularly counting on AI to streamline their operations, shave costs, speed service delivery and boost network efficiencies, among other benefits. “AI is going to take away a lot of the human interaction with the networks,” said Chris Bastian, former CTO of the SCTE, A Subsidiary of Cable Labs in the U.S. and now an industry consultant. “Before AI, human errors introduced in flawed software code and provisioning caused significant network performance issues and outages… AI should prevent many similar issues in the future.” In fact, despite some nagging questions and concerns about AI (which we will get into later), many cable operators seem to be counting on AI to do everything but slice the bread and butter the toast. So, they are peppering tech vendors with questions about and orders for AI-related products. “AI’s been part of every conversation we go into with customers,” said Rob Wilmoth, senior industry principal, North America Telco, Media and Entertainment at Red Hat. “It’s what we’re seeing across the whole Red Hat customer base.” As a result, cable operators and vendors are investing heavily in the potentially transformative technology. And, for the most part, technologists seem to like what they are seeing from the early results so far. “It’s definitely in the field now,” said Guy Sucharczuk, CEO of Aurora Networks (formerly CommScope). “And it’s definitely doing what people expect it to do.” Yet, at the same time, nobody really knows yet exactly what AI will end up bringing to the broadband sector, nor whether it will prove to be worth all the time, trouble and expense in the end. In other words, the jury is still very much out on AI.
Letter from the Americas In a new regular column, industry journalist Alan Breznick reports on the evolving broadband, telecoms and technology landscape in the Americas
BY Alan Breznick North American Correspondent
Following years of extensive lab studies, technical trials and pilot deployments, North American cable operators and their tech suppliers are starting to put such advanced technologies as network automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to work in the field.
80
MARCH 2026 Volume 48 No.1
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker