AI is changing how operators compete on fiber, according to Nokia executives who said the shift is moving beyond network expansion toward how fiber is operated and scaled. Speaking with Fierce Network TV, Stefaan Vanhastel, head of marketing and innovation for fixed networks, said the industry is moving from “gigabit fiber for the happy few” to broader access, driven in part by the growing role of AI across work and daily life.
David Eckard, head of strategy for fixed networks at Nokia, said the competitive shift is less about adding capacity and more about using AI to run networks more efficiently. He pointed to improvements in operations, insights and deployment speed, supported by platforms such as Altiplano, Corteca and Broadband Easy. Vanhastel added that early results are already emerging, including shorter help desk calls and higher rates of first-time-right installations, which directly impact operator costs and service performance.
Both executives said the next phase of competition will depend on how well operators connect data across access, transport and home networks. Issues often span multiple domains, requiring broader visibility to diagnose and resolve. AI is enabling that shift by pulling together data from across the network, signaling a move toward more coordinated, data-driven operations as fiber demand rises alongside AI adoption.
Tommy Clift:
Stefaan, David, thanks so much for being here. FiberConnect day two. Tell me what's new. What do you guys got going on?
Stefaan Vanhastel:
So the big shift really is that we're going from gigabit fiber for the happy few to gigabit for everybody. AI is becoming more pervasive in every aspect of our daily lives of our work. So we need to make sure that everyone has access to these new powerful AI tools because otherwise we're just creating a new digital divide. This is about building out the fiber infrastructures to make AI accessible to people. And that's the other aspect.
David Eckard:
Yeah, it's not just getting the fiber there. Fiber's going to give you that infinite amount of capacity. But once you actually have the fiber there, we're looking at using AI for the operations to really streamline, to allow operators to go faster with what they already have. I mean, even the large operators down to the smaller operators, AI is truly a revolutionary thing that we see happening in the industry. So AI for operations, AI for insights, AI for speed of deployment. So these are the things that we're bringing to the market through our Altiplano, our Corteca, and our Broadband Easy. It's really enabling operators to go so much faster than they have in the past.
Tommy Clift:
Yeah. So I mean, you mentioned it's been in the oven for a long time, but the last few years, you don't have to look far, AI is everywhere, but we're still kind of in that phase where you have to sift through the hype to really see where the impacts of longevity really are going to be. And so from an operator perspective, where do you guys see those impacts being?
Stefaan Vanhastel:
We're now at the point where operators ask the question, okay, this is great technology. Is it a science experiment or is it actually going to do something for my network? And that's why we've been developing these AI agents together with operators. We took real problems from real networks and we figured out a way how to solve them with using AI agents. That also means that we already have the first results from the field. We know we can reduce the average time to reduce a help desk call from like 10 minutes to sub five minutes. We know that we can make installs first time right more than 50% of the time. And that translates directly into savings for the operators.
David Eckard:
And I think the other part of it too is the entire ecosystem and not just the active vendors such as ourselves, but other vendors in the entire ecosystem to build a fiber network, to operate a fiber network, all working together to kind of bring this together. And this is why you have this moment in time where you see, yeah, there's a lot of AI happening. AI is not a chatbot. It's not a chatbot. It is truly services that are interconnected to, again, to create new experiences, to bring these type of experiences to the market faster. And again, it takes a whole village to make it all happen. And again, what we've been bringing to the table with our open standards, our open access, open capabilities, this is prime fuel for driving this whole AI machine forward.
Tommy Clift:
Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I appreciate the distinction there between there's a lot of benefits for operators, but it's not necessarily just a chatbot or network efficiency. So curious to talk, you already kind of brushed on it, but what are kind of the full ecosystem impacts when you look at, again, I'd say catered towards the operator perspective, but like you said, it is a pretty interconnected ecosystem there?
Stefaan Vanhastel:
I mean, one of the side benefits of AI and agentic AI is that you pull data from different sources. So the industry typically works with, okay, you have a domain controller for the access network. You have a domain controller for the transport network. We have the main controller for the home. But when you're trying to optimize something or solving a problem for the subscriber, we need to be able to pull data from different sources and then the AI agent needs to make sense of it because the customer complains about wifi, but the problem might be somewhere different in a network. And that's really that ecosystem, right? You need to be able to pull data from different sources, from the installers in the fields, from wifi and the home, from the routers and the network, and you need to be able to figure out what's going wrong.
David Eckard:
And that's what's so critical. I mean, again, we have such detailed records that they're coming from the guys who are designing the fiber network, who are designing, putting and installing the equipment. Well, it's great to have that. But if you actually now have the active data that's actually really happening in real time and connected to the actual passive data, the data that's been put into the ground, it's amazing how much insights you can have. And that's some of the tools that we're bringing into the marketplace, work some of our partners to make all that happen. So very excited to see truly, again, this whole ecosystem kind of come together.
Tommy Clift:
Yeah. Well, Stefaan, David, thanks so much for taking the time.
David Eckard:
Thank you.
Stefaan Vanhastel:
Thank you.
Tommy Clift:
Great to talk.