AI and hyperscaler growth are putting new pressure on the physical infrastructure supporting telecom networks. Roberto Ambriz, solutions architect director at Fortress Group, says power density at inline amplifier, or ILA, sites could increase significantly as hyperscaler traffic grows, particularly along routes serving multiple providers. That shift is pushing carriers to reconsider power requirements and reliability while continuing to support legacy equipment.
Ambriz also sees ILA infrastructure evolving to accommodate substantially higher fiber counts and next-generation equipment. As carriers navigate the transition, sites will need to support existing infrastructure while preparing for the increased power and fiber requirements driven by AI. He also discusses how AI itself could reduce certain maintenance requirements through large-scale analytics and predictive maintenance. With long-haul fiber continuing to transport growing volumes of data between cities and 6G poised to serve different connectivity needs within them, infrastructure planning will be critical to supporting the next generation of network demand.
Diana Goovaerts:
Roberto, what changes are you seeing in how carriers need to think about network infrastructure as hyperscaler demand grows?
Roberto Ambriz:
It's really pushing it over the edge. Traditionally, telecom has been at a very low power density, somewhere around 10 kilowatts per ILA shelter. With the hyperscale demand growth, I mean, we're seeing that fold grow either 5X or 10X. And it really depends on if the route has multiple hyperscalers on that route, and we can see as high as up to 10X growth in the power density. So it's something that the telecom industry really needs to plan for.
Diana Goovaerts:
I mean, we're thinking about network convergence and all of these different elements that are kind of coming together. So do telecom compute and power kind of become one critical infrastructure stack in the future?
Roberto Ambriz:
We have some of that already happening actually. When you look up and look at Starlink's next generation, their new deployment of their new version satellite actually has inference compute incorporated in it. So they are cutting edge right now and I can see that propagating down to the terrestrial side as well.
Diana Goovaerts:
How are expectations around reliability and resiliency evolving across the telecom industry? Because I know reliability metrics are a little bit different between telecoms and hyperscalers.
Roberto Ambriz:
In the telecom industry, the carrier class reliability is actually five nines. In the data center world, it's been traditionally four nines and they build that through a combination of critical infrastructure. Whereas in the telecom industry, they really rely on vendors support out in the field, dispatching and reliable alarm telemetry. So with these new power densities, we're actually going to have to take a page out of the data center side and incorporate that into the telecom standards. So we are doing that currently right now in our next generation ILAs.
Diana Goovaerts:
I mean, we're talking here about some changes that are happening and a lot of this is happening because of AI, but does AI reduce the need for network maintenance or does it actually make infrastructure management more complex?
Roberto Ambriz:
I think it absolutely reduces the amount of maintenance because there's a lot of maintenance that's just really clean and inspect. We go out, we have vendors going out to sites just to do visual inspections. And what AI is capable of doing is large scale analytics and actually do some predictive maintenance and inspections at the sites. So I think AI, if it's incorporated correctly, will actually reduce the amount of maintenance required.
Diana Goovaerts:
How much existing network infrastructure can realistically survive this shift to AI native and 6G networks?
Roberto Ambriz:
The 6G network is really servicing a different application than in the long haul. The long haul now, when I first started in the telecom industry, we were using very 96-count fiber cable, and actually that fiber count has increased to 864 fibers per cable. So really the interconnect fiber opportunity continues to be still the best way to transport the data between city to city. And the 6G, once it's in the city, I think that's where 6G will flourish and it'll take that to the customer.
Diana Goovaerts:
I want to circle back to what you were talking about with ILAs, right? So networks today use inline amplifiers or ILAs to boost optical signals, but I'm curious whether AI and other new network demands coupled with new technologies could change whether and how these are deployed. You kind of touched on it, but how do you see the ILA model evolving over the coming years and how exactly does this change how carriers need to plan for those future sites?
Roberto Ambriz:
The carriers currently are in a transitional period right now. They have to support legacy equipment and also plan for the next-generation equipment, which is a order of magnitude increase in fiber optic count and also in power. So right now the ILA needs to evolve that it can support existing legacy equipment and also plan for the next generation equipment, which is being driven by AI.