The technical conversation around the next generation of wireless connectivity is moving very quickly. WiFi 7 is now shipping in real equipment.

Eric Bathras has written a thoughtful piece arguing that the next stage of the federal broadband effort should move beyond single purpose fiber builds and toward what he calls a digital fabric.

There is a particular kind of room where I have spent a lot of my working life. It does not always look the same. Sometimes it is a network operations centre with screens covering one wall. Sometimes it is a small meeting room where an incident bridge is being run from a laptop.

Eric Bathras has put forward an idea worth paying attention to. He is calling for the next stage of the federal broadband effort to move beyond single purpose builds and into what he describes as a shared digital fabric, with fibre routes, towers, rights of way, and coordination platforms working together to serve many public needs at once.

Modern life sits on top of a small number of systems that almost nobody thinks about until they stop working. Phone calls travel through cables and switches that were planned years before anyone made the call. Hospitals run on networks that quietly carry test results from one floor to another.