This week: Highline's Matt Hayes and Ciena's Kevin Sheehan join the show to discuss where they're collaborating to close connectivity gaps, how they're preparing for BEAD, how AI can help spur deployments and more.
This episode features Matt Hayes, CTO at Highline – a regional ISP owned by ITC Capital, serving Michigan, Nebraska, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia – and Kevin Sheehan, CTO of the Americas at Ciena, a partner of Highline's.
We discuss where and how Highline is helping to close the digital divide for unserved and underserved regions with public and private funds, and what role Ciena is playing in spurring those deployments.
We also discuss how the companies are preparing for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program – including Ciena's recent announcement that it will domestically manufacture some BEAD products – as well as how artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help solve some of the labor shortages in the fiber workforce.
Here are some topics covered in this episode:
Background on Highline and its service areas (01:30)
How Highline conducts community outreach (04:00)
Highline's biggest deployment and uptake challenges in rural areas (05:55)
How and where Highline and Ciena are working together (08:47)
How AI tools can help accelerate broadband network deployment (10:30)
What role public funding plays in Highline's buildouts and how the company is preparing to participate in BEAD (15:48)
More on Ciena's move to expand domestic manufacturing for BEAD (20:00)
For a lightly edited transcript of this conversation, click the caption button on the player above.
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