AI is the New Netflix

At my 2008 NewTeeVee conference, I asked Reed Hastings, then CEO of Netflix, whether streaming video would become the first killer app of broadband. It seemed obvious: video would consume capacity. And eventually it did. Streaming became the thing that made people care about downstream speed, drove the upgrade cycle, and reshaped how operators planned capacity. Now I think we’re watching a rerun of the same movie. AI is becoming the killer app of the next broadband era. Not because of what it downloads, but because of what it uploads. If you have been following my writing on how broadband traffic is changing (the upload nation piece from March and the Internet of AI piece from earlier this month), you know I have been watching this. The Q1 2026 report adds more weight to it. Earlier this year, when I wrote about fiber upstream averages crossing 100 GB for the first time, I called it a turning point. The new data confirms that and shows early signs of changing behaviors. Cloud Sync…