At Fiber Connect in Nashville, Ryan O’Sullivan, Commercial Sales Director at AFL, joins FMTV’s Alejandro Piñero to unpack the uncertainty swirling around the BEAD rollout. With funding delays, shifting policies, and tariff rollbacks clouding the near-term outlook, O’Sullivan describes how these factors have complicated planning for manufacturers and smaller service providers. The delays are especially disruptive for those who’ve ramped up teams and resources to support fiber-to-the-home builds—only to find the deployment timelines pushed again and again.
But even amid this turbulence, O’Sullivan sees opportunity. Fiber’s role is expanding beyond residential broadband into hyperscale AI infrastructure, grid modernization, and other data-intensive applications. Manufacturers that can pivot to serve those growing markets are finding new momentum despite federal program slowdowns. O’Sullivan also notes a wave of industry consolidation may be on the horizon as companies recalibrate. Despite the current noise, he sees a promising future for fiber, driven by AI’s explosive growth, smart grid investments, and the ongoing demand to connect underserved communities. The takeaway: while BEAD may be uncertain, fiber’s relevance is anything but.
Alejandro Piñero:
All right. Welcome back once again to FMTV's coverage here at Fiber Connect in Nashville, and what better place to start than right here at the beautiful AFL stand? I'm here with Ryan O'Sullivan, Commercial Sales Director. Thanks for joining us here on FMTV.
Ryan O'Sullivan:
Yeah, no, happy to be here and thanks for having me.
Alejandro Piñero:
Absolutely. Let me start, tough question here. I've heard people want to talk about it, others don't want even hear the name of BEAD. Can you tell me what's going on? What are we seeing in the market when it comes to BEAD rollout?
Ryan O'Sullivan:
Yeah, BEAD's lot of uncertainty right now. I think it comes from a few directions. Obviously, when you have a program that was started by a previous administration and you have an administration change six months ago, that immediately throws some uncertainty into it. That's led to technology questions, whether it be fiber versus LEO satellites and how that's going to go. But also, you throw in tariffs and things like that happening in the market along with it, and what you've seen is delays of funding rolling out and a lot of uncertainty that has maybe tampered down the optimism a little bit. I think there's still a lot of optimism that it'll come through, but every time you get a 90-day delay, it begins to be what's going to happen is going to happen. So I think the word is uncertainty for it.
Alejandro Piñero:
Sure. And you mentioned tariffs, so now I did want to ask you about that, talk about uncertainty, right? There's been a lot of changes in policy, a lot of back and forth. Have you seen any impact? What can you tell us about what you're seeing out there?
Ryan O'Sullivan:
I think it's a distraction, because there have been so many rollout and so many rollback, and rollout and rollback, it's just been everywhere. For manufacturers, we've had to really take our time to learn each iteration of these tariffs. And when we're doing that, it's distracting us from trying to prepare for things like major fiber rollouts, BEAD, even taking away some from what's going on in AI and other parts of the business. Anytime you have that, you have the potential to drive a project cost up, so the amount of money for a feasibility study that was set aside for it may change, and that just feeds back to the overall uncertainty of what's been going on in the market I'd say the last 90 to 180 days.
Alejandro Piñero:
Yeah, sure. I'm sure it feels very long, much longer than that for many folks, but that's a great point. Let me get back to fiber then specifically, and really a lot of what you're showing here at your stands. Obviously, we've talked a lot about broadband to the home, and then that's a big topic, but I'm also hearing a lot about new applications or more interest around fiber and other applications outside of the home and outside of that residential and enterprise broadband. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Ryan O'Sullivan:
Yeah, A major driver in the market right now for fiber specifically, and we really believe fiber is the backbone for whether it be fiber to the home, whether it be what's going on with grid modernization, hyperscale AI, fiber's the driver for that. But what we've seen is a major growth with the AI hyperscale investments, this fiber centric. The amount of data that are going through those applications are extremely large, and so if you're a manufacturer and you'd be able to pivot from fiber to the home to AI during this time of uncertainty, you're in a great spot.
Now that doesn't really help you if you're a tier three service provider, if you're an electric co-op trying to figure out how you're going to move forward with your plan. The fiber industry as a whole has been propped up by some of these other things going on in the market like grid mod, like AI, which are fiber-centric, but that's not always helpful for a lot of companies that have added staff, spent a lot of time ramping up for deployments that have been delayed. And hopefully it's just delayed, but that's been a struggle for them, but an ability for some of the industry to pivot.
Alejandro Piñero:
Let me close out then, looking ahead, obviously it might be some of these trends you mentioned there. Tough question because we've talked about the uncertainty that's happening and the distractions going on, but where do you see the industry heading and what's a thought maybe to leave our viewers with here?
Ryan O'Sullivan:
I think a few. I think one is you're seeing a little bit more consolidation right now. You're seeing it with manufacturers, but there's also a lot of talk. It's even at this show this week about there's so many service providers out there that the market's ripe for some consolidation, so I think you could see that. I think what we hope to see over the next three months, six months is really just a finality of what BEAD is going to mean to the market, and hopefully it means we're moving forward with fiber as the leading technology and the money's going to continue to roll out, but the sooner, the better on that.
But I think at the end of the day, for the future of fiber, it's in a great place because you've got good modernization happening. That's the backbone of a lot of this that is going to be fiber centric. You've got hyperscale AI growth that's fiber centric, and you're going to continue to have broadband growth. There's still a whole lot of unserved and underserved areas that require fiber, so while there is an atmosphere of uncertainty, there's a lot of good going on too.
Alejandro Piñero:
Great. Well, we have all that to look forward to. Ryan, thank you so much for having us. We've come early in the morning so we'd catch you. You've been a busy guy, I'm sure busy day ahead so thanks again for having us here on your stand.
Ryan O'Sullivan:
Thank you so much, it's been great.