Executive Roundtable Topics
Explore 21 peer-led discussions designed around the most pressing challenges facing broadband executives.
Find the Conversation that Matters Most to You
Topics are organized by category so attendees can quickly identify the discussions most relevant to their role, company, and current challenges
Broadband leaders are making decisions today that will shape their organizations for the next decade. These discussions focus on leadership, growth, partnerships, competition, and long-term strategic planning.
Discussion Topics
Where Is Real Growth Coming From Over the Next 3 Years? (WAS Growth Strategies for the Next Five Years)
A strategic conversation about the markets, products and operating moves most likely to create durable growth.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Growth can come from footprint expansion, deeper penetration, new segments, acquisitions, enterprise services or improved retention. Each path demands different capital, capabilities and risk tolerance.
Facilitator: Bree Maki, Minnesota Broadband DirectorÂ
Build vs. Buy vs. Partner: How Are You Deciding in 2026?
A decision-focused conversation about where operators should own capability, acquire it or share it.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The fastest or least expensive path is not always the most strategic. Leaders must weigh speed, control, talent, capital, integration, resilience and the ability to change course later.
Facilitator: Britta Appel, Neveda Broadband DirectorÂ
Overbuilding: Threat, Opportunity, or Both?
A competitive-strategy conversation about how operators assess, anticipate and respond to overlapping infrastructure.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Overbuilding can pressure pricing and share, but it can also validate demand, expose weak service or create acquisition and partnership opportunities. The right response depends on customer strength, network position and capital discipline.
Facilitator: Bob Knight, Harry, CEOÂ
Partnerships That Actually Work (and the Ones That Don’t)
A candid review of the governance, incentives and operating behaviors that make broadband partnerships durable.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Broadband partnerships can unlock capital, infrastructure, customers, rights of way and specialized capability. They also fail when objectives, economics, decision rights and exit expectations remain ambiguous.
Facilitator: Joe Baeumel, KPGCo, VP StrategyÂ
Private Equity, Public Funding, or Organic Growth—What’s the Smart Play?
A capital-strategy conversation about how funding source shapes speed, control, risk, accountability and strategic options.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Capital is not interchangeable. Private equity, public funding, debt and organic growth impose different timelines, governance, return expectations and operating obligations. The smart play depends on strategy and readiness.
Facilitator: Steve Coran, Lerman & Senter, Attorney
What Will Break Your Network in 5 Years That You’re Not Planning For?
A forward-looking risk conversation designed to reveal overlooked failure modes before they become urgent.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The risks causing the most disruption often develop outside a single planning function: power, climate, supply chain, workforce, cyber, vendor concentration, traffic patterns, regulation, capital or organizational complexity.
Facilitator: Matt Larsen, CEO, Vistabeam
From grant applications to post-award execution, these discussions explore the realities of building broadband networks in today’s funding environment. Learn from peers navigating BEAD implementation, matching funds, compliance, permitting, and project execution.
Discussion Topics
What’s Actually Slowing Down BEAD Deployment—and How Are You Fixing It?
A candid operating conversation about where BEAD projects are getting stuck and what is actually moving them forward.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The distance between an approved plan and a working network is filled with permitting, make-ready, procurement, labor, compliance and local coordination. Sharing the mechanics of delay helps participants recognize preventable risk earlier.
Matching Funds: Creative Ways to Close the Gap Without Killing ROI
A practical comparison of how operators are closing matching-fund gaps while protecting liquidity, control and long-term returns.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A project can satisfy program rules and still strain the balance sheet. The real decision involves timing, cost of capital, risk allocation, ownership and the operating margin needed after construction.
Winning vs. Losing BEAD Applications: What Are We Learning?
A lessons-learned conversation about what separated credible, executable applications from those that fell short.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The most useful application lessons are the assumptions, evidence, partnerships, economics and execution plans that reviewers trusted—or questioned.
Post-Award Reality: What No One Told You About Execution
An operator-level discussion of what changes after the award announcement and where plans begin to bend.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An award starts the clock on staffing, procurement, reporting, community coordination and build commitments. The earliest post-award decisions can determine whether later problems remain manageable.
Rural vs. Urban Operations: What’s Fundamentally Different?
A market-reality conversation about which operating assumptions transfer—and which fail—across rural and urban environments.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Density, travel time, customer mix, competition, permitting, workforce and infrastructure access can change the economics of the same operating model. Treating rural as smaller urban—or urban as denser rural—creates blind spots.
Operating a successful broadband network requires balancing performance, workforce, customer expectations, and financial discipline. These discussions focus on practical operational improvements and shared experiences.
Discussion Topics
Where Are You Actually Cutting Costs Without Killing Quality?
A disciplined discussion of cost reductions that protect service, reliability and long-term operating leverage.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Some savings remove complexity and waste; others defer maintenance, move cost downstream or weaken the customer experience. Leaders need a clearer distinction between efficiency and erosion.
Labor Shortages: What’s Working (and Not) Right Now?
A field-tested conversation about recruiting, retaining, developing and deploying the talent broadband work requires.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Labor pressure appears differently across construction, engineering, field service, cybersecurity and leadership. The solution may involve workforce development, process design, partner strategy, technology or a different employment proposition.
Vendor Overload: How Do You Evaluate Without Wasting Time?
A practical discussion of how leaders narrow choices, validate claims and run better vendor decisions.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Operators face crowded categories, similar claims and limited time for diligence. A weak process creates meeting fatigue, fragmented platforms and implementations that never deliver the promised operating value.
Customer Experience vs. Cost: Where Do You Draw the Line?
A trade-off conversation about where customer-experience investment creates value and where it adds cost without impact.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Every customer touchpoint has a cost, but poor experiences also create calls, truck rolls, credits, churn and reputational damage. Leaders need an economic view of experience, not a choice between delight and efficiency.
What’s Actually Working to Reduce Churn Right Now?
A results-oriented conversation about the signals, interventions and service changes that retain customers.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Churn is often treated as a price or marketing problem after the decision is made. In reality, the causes may begin with installation, reliability, billing, support, competition or a failure to recognize risk early.
Trouble Tickets: What’s Causing the Most Pain Right Now?
A root-cause discussion about the technical and process failures generating repeat contacts, dispatches and customer frustration.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Ticket queues can hide a network, installation, equipment, communication or knowledge problem. Reducing volume sustainably requires connecting symptoms across support, field and engineering teams.
Technology continues to reshape broadband. These discussions explore network evolution, cybersecurity, AI, automation, and preparing infrastructure for the demands of tomorrow.
Discussion Topics
Where Are You Most Vulnerable Right Now—and What Are You Actually Doing About It?
An action-focused security conversation about the exposures leaders understand, the gaps they do not and the work that can no longer wait.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Broadband networks are critical infrastructure, and security risk crosses systems, vendors, people, physical assets and incident response. General awareness is not enough; leaders must prioritize exposure and make ownership clear.
Fiber, Fixed Wireless, or Hybrid—What’s Winning Where?
A technology-agnostic conversation about where each access model creates the strongest operating and economic fit.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Technology decisions depend on geography, density, spectrum, infrastructure, capital, speed to market, customer demand and operating capability. Vendor-neutral experience is more valuable than abstract superiority claims.
Edge + AI Demands: Are You Planning for It—or Ignoring It?
A grounded discussion of how AI-driven workloads and edge architectures may change capacity, latency, reliability and operations.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
AI demand will not arrive as one uniform traffic wave. Impacts may appear in upstream use, enterprise requirements, data-center interconnection, latency sensitivity, power, security and automated operations. Planning requires scenarios, not hype.
Future-Proofing Networks: What Does That Really Mean in Practice?
A practical definition of future-proofing as a sequence of adaptable architecture, capacity and operating decisions.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
No network is permanently future-proof. Leaders can protect upgrade paths, avoid irreversible constraints and create capacity and operational flexibility at rational points in the investment cycle.