Metro Connect USA 2026: 10 things we learned

Power play

In his keynote at Metro Connect last year, DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi spoke of the importance of access to power in building out infrastructure for AI and, this year, Ganzi stressed the same message again.

While the theme is constant, the exact nature of the power conundrum is subtly shifting.

Last year, Ganzi cautioned against neglecting power requirements in the scramble to buy up GPUs, that goes without saying in 2026.

Now, his address focused on the infrastructure constraints faced by developers and investors when it comes to bringing power to data centre projects, specifically related to grid problems.

Another key difference from 12 months ago is the political side of power delivery: “Power has become a game of how politically connected you are and whether you have the ability to deliver off-grid, off-network power,” he said “If you’re not putting power back into the grid, you’re not going to get onto it”.

Away from the power aspect, Ganzi’s address covered a range of other factors weighing on digital infrastructure buildout, including water availability, the importance of partnerships, and a lot more. Read Amber Jackson’s take on it below.

Community pushback is hitting the bottom line

Ever since the data centre construction boom really took off in the United States, conference sessions have dedicated a lot of airtime to how developers can manage the PR, with dire warnings of what will happen if they don’t.

Now the pushback is real – and there are numbers on it.

Andy Lipman presented statistics showing that more than 20 projects representing north of $100 billion in spending have been blocked across the United States, pushing the community engagement question to the top of the inbox.

Driven by rising electricity prices alongside other factors, dissent is widespread and across the political spectrum. A ‘No Desert Data Center Coalition’ in Arizona; marches in Texas and 20,000 petition signatures pausing development in Maryland are just some of the examples of grassroots opposition to data centre buildout.

Inevitably, this then flows up into administrative and municipal hostility as representatives follow voter sentiment – like what happened in Arizona at the end of 2025, where following sustained pressure a city council blocked a land re-zoning that would have allowed an AI data centre to be built.

With six in 10 Americans distrusting AI in general, it is not enough to just put up capital, secure power and find land – the people have power too.

Fibre buildout: this time it’s different

Investors are rushing in with capital. Thousands of miles of fibre are entering the network on a monthly basis.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

It’s understandable those with longer memories are wary of similarities to the nineties dotcom boom, which saw over a trillion dollars spent on fibre in the second half of the decade alone. Around half of this sum ended up listed in bankruptcy filings.

However, according to the Metro Connect USA CEO panel, there are three key differences between AI buildout today and the fibre frenzy of the 1990s.

One: the way projects are designed. In the nineties, long-haul fibre often followed the build-it-and-they’ll-come philosophy, with no committed revenue prior to the fibre going in. This time, most fibre projects are built to serve at least an anchor tenant, often a hyperscaler or AI data centre, providing a strong base to attract further customers with some actual revenue already in the bank.
Two: there are new sources of demand. Today’s fibre will carry traffic to serve more mobile subscriptions, FTTH and local FWA, and enterprise digital transformation to name three, and that’s not even taking AI into account. While businesses were digitising in the 1990s too, it wasn’t happening at the same pace – and the fact AI traffic is net new (rather than, say, enterprise workloads moving from on-prem to cloud) provides even more use cases for the new fibre.
Three: investment sources are broader. Last time, buildout was massively leveraged – corporate bonds, speculative equity offerings, and aggressively underwritten bank loans. This time, venture and private capital are more present, and more projects are being paid for by actual operating cashflow, particularly for hyperscale-driven projects.

All in all, the fibre buildout might be bringing uncomfortable flashbacks – but the foundations are a lot sturdier three decades on.

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The ball is rolling on BEAD – and more

This time last year, the $42 billion BEAD program was very much on the chopping block.

Government officials had been highly critical of the NTIA’s focus on broadband equity, and after half a year of uncertainty, President Trump enacted a slew of changes to BEAD. The stated aim of the changes was to hollow out the DEI and digital equity aspects of the programme, but the changes also intended a shift from fibre primacy, with satellite and FWA to be the main beneficiaries.

One year on, BEAD is in a safer position, and deployments are starting to happen – with extra funding from elsewhere too. The NTIA has approved $23bn of additional funding, primarily on fibre, with satellite and fixed wireless between them deployed at a third of locations covered under the funding plan.

With tens of millions of fibre passings coming on stream annually, and the rapid buildout underway, it is worth bearing in mind that under 30% of American homes currently have FTTH subscriptions at all – there is cavernous headroom in the market.

Towers still not getting a look in

Not all asset classes are sharing the upside, though. The tower sector has had a rough time of it recently, falling 20% in 2023 and again in 2024 as high interest rates and the fallout from 5G investment miscalculations began to bite.

This was a key talking point at last year’s Metro Connect, making it into the annual State of the Market session from TD Cowan. This year, however, the US tower market is still so sluggish that the sector barely got a mention on stage at all. Is this a sign towers are still in trouble, or has the industry taken its eye off the ball among the discussions of AI, BEAD, fibre buildout and data centre financing?

Labour shortages: the same story every year

Another recurring theme at Metro Connect, present in last year’s roundup too, is labour shortages and the threat they pose to delivering on ambitions buildout timelines. The problem took up considerable stagetime in 2026, with some slightly scary anecdotes presented – according to one insider talking to Andy Lipman, there is not a fibre splicer in the whole of the United States who is under 50 years old.

There are numerous initiatives in play to widen participation and/or poach specialists from other industries. But these take time to bear fruit. In the meantime, developers and builders need to build watertight talent pipelines and nail their staff retention and subcontractor management.

GPU-as-a-service: be careful

Neoclouds, or GPU-as-a-service companies, have rocketed in prominence over the past year, signing multi-billion dollar deals to provide compute to data centre builds.

But be careful, says Warren Roll, Managing Director and Head of Digital Infrastructure at Fengate. If these companies’ deals become too divorced from commercial reality, the industry risks a “WeWork 2.0” scenario, referencing the office pace provider that collapsed under the weight of ludicrous overvaluation. “There’s a structural mismatch between the long-term leases they’re signing and the short-term agreements they have with their own customers,” he warned.

Internet exchanges: plugging the gaps

In contrast, there is some essential plumbing work underway elsewhere in the ecosystem – internet exchanges.

This was the focus of Metro Connect stalwart Hunter Newby’s 2026 presentation – the ‘AIXP’ and how they can keep the AI revolution on the road. According to Newby, there are some startling gaps in internet exchange coverage in the United States. He gave an example of one such gap he managed to fill – Wichita in Kansas, which despite its 650,000-strong population did not have an internet exchange. Connected Nation IXP filled this gap, partnering with Wichita State University and De-CIX to deliver a new facility capable of handling the increases in traffic coming to the state.

This offers a blueprint for increasing coverage across the country, too. With even bigger cities than Wichita lacking IXPs – Louisville, for example – Connected Nation is looking to roll out 125 neutral IXP facilities wherever there is a gap for them, partnering with universities across the United States.

If all the hundreds of thousands of new fibre is the roads, internet exchanges are the junctions – without them, the traffic is just going to get stuck. So it is vital that internet exchange development keeps up with the rest of digital infrastructure.

Data centres in space: ‘ridiculous’, or a solution to land and power constraints?

The question of putting data centres in space moved from LinkedIn argument territory to potential commercial reality this year with Elon Musk coordinating an acquisition of one of his companies by another – putting space launching and AI capabilities in the same organisation.

Not everyone agrees it is a good idea (“ridiculous” is Sam Altman’s take on it), and a Metro Connect USA panel on the topic produced just as varied a set of opinions. The plus points – free real estate, potentially more efficient energy use – came against the downsides, such as poor latency and higher costs.

The discussion is likely to still be hypothetical for some time yet, but with the infrastructure available to deliver the hardware, next year’s Metro Connect USA roundup may see discussions of some launches.

Route growth is relieving pricing pressure in fibre

A positive one to end on for fibre builders. Price compression is the headache the industry can’t shift, and revenue defence can only hold out for so long. But according to Lightpath’s CEO Chris Morley, the balance is shifting – he told delegates that the squeeze on his margins was offset last year by the growth in revenue delivered by new routes. Building your way out of margin pressure could be a good bet.