“AI has to be used in such a way that it’s not there just for the sake of being there.” That’s what Stephen Rose, CEO of Render Networks, told Telecompetitor when we sat down at the 2025 Fiber Connect Conference to talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the work of broadband construction teams.
Rose believes AI should be used sparingly — “just use it when you really need to.” One of these necessary use cases for AI is its role in improving broadband construction processes via AI-powered construction management platforms.
“There is a lot of confusion between project management tools and construction management tools,” Rose said. “Originally, people thought they were one and the same thing, and they’re not. Project management tools look at top-level milestones and offer some workflow management, but they don’t go into anything like the depth of a construction management platform.”
Rose offered several examples of how AI can be deployed for broadband construction:
- Quality control. Field technicians tracking and reporting progress on broadband construction can take a picture of their work, which AI can analyze to ensure the work is done correctly or report that it needs to be fixed.
- Speech-to-text reporting. “Some people are better at writing, some people are worse at writing,” Rose said. AI speech-to-text features allow technicians and other employees to speak into a recording device, like a cell phone, and submit reports without writing. He noted that speech-to-text can understand various accents and help mitigate language barriers.
- Pattern analysis. Using speech-to-text as an example, Rose said, “The app will convert the text, and then you take that data up to the next layer and see AI employed again for statistical analysis or trend analysis.” When several field teams report similar events, AI can recognize a pattern and identify potential issues.
- Planning and scheduling. At the start of a project, the work is separated into tasks — often thousands of tasks. AI can schedule tasks with appropriate dependencies so work crews are deployed at the right time. According to Rose, this AI feature alone saves valuable time in the broadband construction process.
- Project tracking and monitoring. AI platforms work with real-time construction data so you can see where crews and materials can be shifted for optimal efficiency. This helps make projects run more quickly and smoothly.
- Preventing rework. AI gives visibility into project quality in real time, which helps prevent redoing work. Rose cited a statistic: 60% of fiber buildouts are over budget because of rework. “Since you don’t have visibility into what’s happening on the program on a real-time basis, you’re not intervening early enough,” he said. “The work is being completed, somebody is checking it, and they say, ‘That’s not good enough.’ So they send a crew back out, and that’s really expensive.”
Rose thinks broadband construction firms are beginning to realize how the power of AI can help manage their projects. “The ecosystem maturity in live networks is very much [already] there,” he said. “Once a network has gone live, the software that’s running it has to work to ensure a positive customer experience… But in the build phase, we don’t see anything like that maturity.”
AI helps the entire broadband ecosystem work together, so design data informs construction plans, and testing and measurement data can be easily matched to compliance and contract requirements.
The biggest issue, Rose said, is adoption. “You have to take a change management approach to this. People consider [AI] to be a tool. It’s not a tool; these construction management platforms fundamentally change the way of working.” Platform adoption must be approached intentionally so that all teams are in sync. “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
