Running from now until Wednesday, Metro Connect USA is taking place at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa. The event focuses on the U.S. fiber market, including metro, dark fiber, long-haul, subsea, fiber to the home, and fixed wireless access, as well as data centers, cloud providers, wireless communications infrastructure providers, and their investors.
Metro Connect USA is “the most important annual touch point for the U.S. digital infrastructure community to renew agreements, build new partnerships, agree financing and M&A deals, and learn about the future state of the industry,” according to organizers.
Yesterday’s session began with opening remarks by Andy Lipman, Partner, Morgan Lewis followed by a Keynote Address by Marc Ganzi, Chief Executive Officer at DigitalBridge. Ganzi spoke on “How is Generative AI Disrupting Digital Infrastructure?”
“We believe this is a once in a decade secular opportunity,” Ganzi said, “there is roughly $5-to-$6 million of CapEx that will be spent in building AI infrastructure. So if we contextualize that against the public cloud which started ten years ago, we spent $3.7 trillion and we turned on 13 gigawatts of compute capacity just to build the public cloud to where it is today.”
Ganzi’s remarks were followed by a Keynote presentation by Gregory Williams, Director, Cowen and Company with a “State of the Market” forecast. William’s address provided actionable insights and forecasts on the U.S. digital infrastructure market, covering key industry sectors from FTTH, long haul, middle mile, and data centers.
Today’s panel discussions, among others, include:
- How to ensure the success of your broadband funding application?
- Three ways to faster network ROI
- How can we balance demand for FTTH while mitigating the threat of overbuild?
- What do changes in fiber financing mean for investors?
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