Broadband Summit 2026 Debrief: The Infrastructure of Connectivity

Telecom strategy used to be limited to a few baseline questions: Who is the provider? What speeds do they offer? And are they offering the best rate?

That was often the extent of the decision-making process.

Walking out of Broadband Summit 2026, one thing was clear: those questions aren’t enough anymore.

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Internet has outgrown the amenity box.

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Connectivity is no longer an amenity property owners can simply procure. It affects resident experience, retention, smart-building technology, operations, asset value, and increasingly, the flexibility of the property itself.

Instead, telecom is becoming a critical part of a property’s infrastructure. And owners have an opportunity to build telecom strategies designed to adapt, because the network installed today may be operating under entirely different regulations, technologies, and resident expectations five or ten years from now.

Across multiple panels and conversations with industry experts, one takeaway kept surfacing: owners need to conduct their due diligence, understand what they have, and consider every option available to them.

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“It is so critical for owners to know what they have, know their options, and if they don’t, find groups who can find those options for you.”
— Nic Arri, VP of Solutions Consulting

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Mapping out a telecom strategy requires due diligence so opportunities to develop existing assets don’t slip through the cracks. That starts by treating telecom not as an amenity, but as an asset to the property’s infrastructure, with a strategy built for change.

Your Network Should Outlive Today’s Technology

Technology debt is real, and it is coming to collect.

If that didn’t sound ominous enough, the limitations of aging infrastructure should serve as a clear warning.

Outdated wiring can struggle to support today’s baseline device counts and speeds. When wiring is viewed simply as an installation expense rather than a long-term property asset, a property can become limited in what it can offer, regardless of the service being delivered over that infrastructure.

Cat6, fiber, and Wi-Fi 7 are shaping the long-term infrastructure conversation, particularly in new construction. Why? Because the goal isn’t simply to handle current demand. It’s to prepare for a future steeped in change.

And internet use has already changed dramatically:

725 Mbps
Average renter download speeds reached roughly 725 Mbps in Q1 2026.

2X more devices
The average number of connected devices in U.S. households has roughly doubled over the past decade.

Beyond the unit
The next growth frontier is total connectivity, expanding into garages, common areas, cellular coverage, IoT, security, and smart-building applications.

As the uses for technology continue to evolve, will your property’s infrastructure be able to handle them?

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Build for where your property is going, not just what residents need today.

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Telecom strategy is no longer a chase for the single “best” network because there is no one-size-fits-all network. Network design should map to the owner’s asset strategy, hold period, renovation plans, and ROI horizon.

THE TAKEAWAY: Due diligence means treating telecom as a long-term property asset. Plan and build for change, because connectivity should be structured around the property’s future, not just today’s bandwidth requirements.

Reliability Is Becoming a Resident Experience Issue

Residents, in most cases, don’t care which access point is hanging from the ceiling or which provider built the network.

ResiDesk presented research on how connectivity issues affect resident NPS and retention. The results were hard to ignore:

• One network problem, on average, drops resident NPS from +31 to +4.
• Three problems push it to -10.
• Move-out intentions rise from 12% to 26% among residents experiencing three or more internet issues.
• A standard network outage increases reported non-renewal likelihood to 58%.
• Weekly outages push it dramatically higher to 83%.

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One memorable outage can carry substantial weight in how residents view a property.

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Those findings make a strong financial case for investments in secondary fiber or cellular redundancy.

Redundancy is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a premium add-on because a single fiber cut can erase years of positive uptime perception. If residents increasingly see connectivity as a high-value property asset, owners need to prioritize keeping it reliable.

THE TAKEAWAY: Reliability has a measurable relationship with how residents perceive, and potentially whether they remain at, a property.

The Best Contract Is Built to Change

A network designed to last ten years isn’t worth much if its agreement can’t adapt for ten years.

Contract diligence can’t start and end when a contract is signed. It exists throughout the full lifecycle. From acquiring a property and inheriting agreements to negotiation, operation, renewal, and eventual transition.

That includes understanding conversion rights. Agreements should:

1. Clearly define conversion triggers.
2. Establish who can exercise the conversion right.
3. Lay out notice requirements and applicable fees.
4. Address infrastructure, equipment, and resident data.
5. Distinguish regulatory opt-outs from discretionary business conversions.

Legally required opt-outs driven by new regulation are very different from discretionary business conversions, which can directly affect a provider’s expected ROI. The two shouldn’t be conflated in contract language.

Consolidation Adds Another Variable

The broadband industry is also experiencing a significant period of consolidation, making provider mergers and acquisitions another important consideration for owners and operators.

In 2026 alone, Verizon completed its acquisition of Frontier, expanding its fiber footprint to nearly 30 million locations, while Charter completed its merger with Cox Communications. In March, GFiber and Stonepeak announced they were combining GFiber with Astound Broadband, creating a new leading independent fiber provider. Those deals follow T-Mobile’s 2025 acquisition of UScellular’s wireless operations and reflect a broader push toward greater scale and convergence across the telecom industry.

For property owners, that consolidation creates a simple reality:

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The provider that signs an agreement today may not be the provider managing that relationship several years from now.

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Assignment and change-of-control provisions should specify whether consent or notice is required. Agreements should also clarify whether a merger constitutes an assignment, whether the successor assumes all obligations, including liability and data-handling requirements, and who owns the operational relationship during a transition.

As consolidation reshapes the broadband landscape, contracts need to account not only for the provider you choose today, but for who that provider could become tomorrow.

THE TAKEAWAY: Technology flexibility without contract flexibility is only half a strategy. If an opportunity arises to move among bulk, opt-in, or other models, the contract shouldn’t be the first thing standing in the way.

Regulation Isn’t Killing Bulk, It’s Changing the Conversation

The perception of risk can sometimes be more disruptive than the regulation itself.

Amid regulatory uncertainty in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Seattle, and other markets, some owners are pausing bulk strategies, even where bulk remains viable.

Regulation isn’t eliminating bulk internet as a telecom strategy, but it is changing what a successful bulk program looks like. Recent regulatory activity has focused heavily on consumer choice, transparency, and the ability to opt out rather than eliminating bulk arrangements altogether.

California, for example, now requires landlords to allow residents to opt out of certain third-party internet subscriptions while explicitly preserving an owner’s ability to offer bulk billing.

That makes resident value increasingly important to a successful bulk strategy. When bulk internet delivers competitive pricing, reliable service, and a strong resident experience, owners and providers are in a better position to demonstrate its consumer benefits as regulators consider new protections.

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Bulk isn’t disappearing. The variables shaping a successful bulk strategy are changing.

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Flexibility, transparency, and demonstrable resident value are becoming essential to the future of bulk, and to determining where the model makes sense for a property.

Providers Are Becoming Partners, Not Vendors

When connectivity is treated like another amenity, choosing a provider can feel more like a procurement exercise than the beginning of a partnership.

That gets a little sticky when the relationship can last three to ten years and that provider is responsible for infrastructure residents depend on every day.

Once again, due diligence matters.

Providers should be evaluated based on:

• Financial stability
• Longevity
• Operational accountability
• Willingness to collaborate
• Ability to support future technologies
• Regulatory adaptability
• Ownership of problems—not simply hardware brands or promised speeds

Consultants deserve the same level of diligence.

Who are they recommending, and why? Were multiple providers evaluated? Are their recommendations truly independent?

But good partnerships work both ways. Owners also need to give providers the time and information required to develop realistic proposals.

That can mean allowing 45 days for an RFP instead of 30, sharing existing plans and documentation, and, most importantly, granting site access rather than relying solely on desktop estimates.

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Inspect what you expect.

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Physical site surveys are essential. A desktop estimate can’t necessarily identify the railroad crossing, parking structure, physical obstruction, or other real-world conditions that change an otherwise perfect network plan.

THE TAKEAWAY: Conduct due diligence for the relationship you’ll need five years from now. Owners are no longer simply choosing providers; they’re choosing long-term partners for the property.

Build for What Comes Next

Broadband Summit 2026 wasn’t really a conversation about faster internet.

It was a conversation about due diligence.

About investing the time and effort required to future-proof properties.

Future-proofing network infrastructure.
Future-proofing contracts.
Future-proofing business models against regulatory change.
Future-proofing the resident experience through redundancy.
And choosing partners capable of navigating those changes alongside ownership teams.

The network serves as the foundation for everything that comes next—from the connectivity residents already expect to technologies that may not even be on an owner’s roadmap yet.

Connectivity is becoming less about buying an internet service and more about building a platform for future growth.

For Conservice, that shift reinforces the role telecom consulting should play: helping owners evaluate more than a provider or a price. From infrastructure diligence and RFP strategy to contract structure and long-term network planning, the goal is to help owners make connectivity decisions that make sense for their properties today—and in an ever-changing future.

Planning what comes next for your portfolio’s connectivity strategy? Talk with the Conservice telecom team.