Matilda Bailey has spent years at the intersection of cellular and wireless infrastructure, but lately, her focus has shifted toward the physical glass backbone of the digital economy. As data centers balloon in size and complexity, she is observing a critical shift where connectivity is no longer a given but a precious resource that must be secured with the same urgency as megawatts. Her perspective helps clarify how the industry can navigate a landscape where fiber route density determines the winners of the artificial intelligence era. This conversation explores the rising demand for bandwidth, the geographic disparities in network availability, and the creative strategies operators are employing to avoid the looming connectivity bottleneck.
Power and water often dominate the conversation around data center limits, but enterprise-grade fiber is now emerging as a significant constraint; how has this shift impacted the way facilities scale and operate today?
Fiber has officially joined the “big three” alongside electricity and water as a foundational input for sustained growth. In the early 2020s, we saw a staggering 330% increase in total bandwidth purchased by data centers, a surge driven by the transition from simple storage to data-intensive workloads. Today, real-time AI inference requires moving massive volumes of data with almost zero latency, making high-throughput glass strands more valuable than ever. I have seen projects stall not because they lacked power, but because they couldn’t secure the necessary fiber route density to support their ramp schedules. Operators can no longer treat connectivity as a utility that just appears; it is now a core site criterion that dictates the very feasibility of a multi-billion dollar build.
While established hubs like Northern Virginia or coastal California seem well-connected, what are the specific challenges facing emerging markets, and why is supply struggling to keep pace with the demand for new facilities?
The disparity between established hubs and emerging markets is a major hurdle for capacity planning. In places like Northern Virginia or the major Texas metros, the infrastructure is dense, but as developers move to secondary markets to find land and power, they often find that last-mile and long-haul bandwidth lag behind significantly. This is compounded by a fundamental shortage of skilled installers and splicers who are needed to physically lay and connect these networks. Furthermore, telecommunications providers often lack the economic incentive to expand into less populated areas without a guaranteed anchor tenant. It creates a frustrating environment where the physical labor and the economic business case aren’t moving as fast as the software side of the industry demands.
Given that most operators do not have the capital of a massive hyperscaler to build their own private networks, what creative strategies can they use to secure the bandwidth they need?
Most operators find themselves in a position where they must influence a build rather than own it. One effective method is to map competitive demand early to see if you will be fighting over the same rights-of-way and crews as a neighboring facility. We are also seeing operators structure creative incentives with carriers, such as committing to minimum spend thresholds or aligning construction windows to improve the carrier’s business case. Some are even thinking beyond traditional telcos by utilizing software-defined services like AWS SiteLink or Azure ExpressRoute Global Reach to interconnect facilities. These options allow for high-bandwidth networking on a pay-as-you-go basis, providing a vital bridge in areas where traditional fiber builds haven’t yet reached.
What is your forecast for fiber connectivity in the data center sector?
From 2026 to 2028, I expect fiber constraints to remain a defining challenge, though the industry will gradually adapt just as it has with energy bottlenecks. We are going to see a much more aggressive move toward multi-carrier route diversity to ensure resilience in the Meet-Me Rooms, which will drive a new wave of construction. The “chicken-and-egg” dynamic of fiber—where limited buildouts suppress demand and low demand discourages builds—will likely be broken by massive, coordinated investments between carriers and AI infrastructure providers. Ultimately, the operators who thrive will be those who view fiber as a strategic asset to be secured years in advance, rather than a cable to be ordered at the end of a project.
