What We’re Looking Forward to at Metro Connect 2025

Last year was my first at Metro Connect, which takes place again at Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor from Feb. 24 to Feb. 26. The event bills itself as “the meeting place for the entire fiber and connectivity ecosystem, uniting industry stakeholders with leading investors.”

Put that another way: There’s a lot of blue blazers in attendance.

At last year’s event, there was a lot of talk about BEAD, the (still-named?) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021. But BEAD has gotten caught in the cross-fire, politically. Most observers still expect the $42.5 billion BEAD program to roll forward, after a few months of figuring out what the Trump administration wants to do.

Meanwhile, there’s a shiny new toy that many of us are paying a lot of attention to: Data centers, the digital infrastructure for artificial intelligence. In fact, Broadband Breakfast will be hosting “Data Centers, Nuclear Power and Broadband” in Washington on March 27. So I’m even more keen on this topic than I was last year.

But, seriously, data centers are a big thing

Data centers huge importance is visible in both in the political and the business worlds. 

At a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing earlier this month, the issue of energy available for data centers came up. And that followed President Donald Trump’s announcement, on his second day back in office, of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, a partnership with software giant Oracle and Japanese financial Softbank.

In the Oval Office, Trump linked his energy-focused executive orders to advances in artificial intelligence and data centers.

And yet the energy challenges could be daunting. As the Economist reported on February 5:

If investment in data centres is about to slow, nobody told Mark Zuckerberg. On January 29th, during an earnings call, Meta’s boss boasted that the social-media giant had plans to build an artificial-intelligence (ai) data centre “so big that it’ll cover a significant part of Manhattan if it were placed there”….

From northern Virginia to Johor Bahru in Malaysia, there are now as many as 11,000 data centres around the world, by one estimate. They collectively guzzle some 55 gigawatts (gw) of power (about as much as the generating capacity of the Netherlands) and take up around 300m square feet of land (more than 4,500 football pitches). 

What’s the focus here at Metro Connect?

Monday morning will witness the traditional broadband CEO panel, including Steve Smith of Zayo, Ken Fitzpatrick of Everstream and Kenny Gunderman of UNITI, as well as merger an acquisition panel subtitled, “Are we seeing a return to increased M&A?” But the real action begins at 2:20, with a panel discussion on “Where and how can we meet the demand for data centres”? (Being a British-run conference, they speak Brit.)

That session will consider:

The demand for data centres continues to boom, with evolving workloads driven by AI creating increased density requirements needing more efficient cooling. Access to power continues to be the primary constraint for new data centre capacity. This is driving builds into secondary markets with available power. Panelists will discuss:

• How are operators adapting to power constraints in core markets?

• What challenges are operators facing as they chase power into new markets and closer to generation sites?

• Is liquid cooling becoming a requirement to meet growing power densities?

It is followed by a presentation of the use of “on-site gas generation as a long-term alternative to the grid,” by Jim Summers, CEO of GPC Infrastructure.

And that, in turn, rolls into a panel discussion on “How are investors meeting the continued demand for capital in data centres?”, with some of the major financiers and others, including Novacap, Natixis, Apterra, Guggenheim Partners and AB Private Credit:

From 2019 to 2024 US data center capacity more than doubled to roughly 32GW, while colocation rates have dropped to approximately 3%. Forward looking forecasts for 2035 range from 120 to 170 GW capacity required. Meeting this demand for data center capacity will require ever-increasing volumes of capital from existing and new innovative sources. This session will explore:

• How the evolving understanding of rating agencies is expanding the role of asset-backed securitization, especially into colocation.

• The growing impact of private credit in meeting data center’s demand for capital.

• How investors are viewing the risk posed by lower-quality AI tenants taking up large amounts of capacity.

Don’t forget BEAD + middle mile

Tuesday’s session will return to federal broadband projects, including “Exploring the challenges and opportunities of upcoming Federal broadband funding.” Note the word order: “challenges” first, before “opportunities.” 

This will feature many broadband mainstays including @Philip James Macres, @Thomas Tyler, Bill Long, @Tamarah Holmes and @Lori Adams:

This session will Explore:

• The progress of different states in distributing funding and timelines for initial deployments.

• How we can overcome the challenges facing applicants, from pre-qualification requirements to securing credit.

• The potential bottlenecks and mitigation facing new deployments in construction and supply.

It is followed by sessions on fiber investment and consolidation, how “new data centre builds [are] driving fibre deployments”, and – one of my favorites – “are we seeing an acceleration in open access adoption?”

Broadband Breakfast has reported extensively on open access networks for more than a decade. In fact, last year’s Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit was “All-in on Open Access.”

Tuesday’s session will include the CEOs of Underline (Bob Thompson), Ripple Fiber (Greg Wilson), Intrepid Fiber Networks (Jack Waters), telMax (Michael Strophe) and Tillman FiberCo. (Phil Cusick), on these questions:

The separation of network and services has clear advantages, from reducing the costs for service providers by distributing the cost of infrastructure to promoting increased network utilisation. In Europe, it is well established, but the US has been slower in adoption. Find out:

• Why has the US been slower in adopting the open access model, and what is currently driving its adoption?

• Will recent investments, like the recent Tilman Fiber announcement in Florida, demonstrate the value of the model and lead to wider adoption?

• What lessons can we learn from earlier open-access models in the US and beyond?

Look for more reporting from Metro Connect on Broadband Breakfast! Or ping me in the channel if you are here in Fort Lauderdale!